The best tool for UX existed since time unknown!

The freshly brewed UX designers sometimes ask you (since you have got experience working hands-on) what is the best tool for UX. The teachings that people receive from the design colleges revolve around the detailed process, which is sort of time-consuming, but can be omitted if necessary. The people who climb the corporate ladder to become UX designers think that UX revolves around software; as they see it in action during their entire career! I have seen many people who open a blank Sketch/ Visio/ any preferred software (sometimes illustrator or photoshop!) document even before they open the requirements report! This saves time as they claim… they can build the wireframes as they go on reading the requirements. But does this save time?

Psychology says that the more time you invest in something, more difficult is to let that thing go. This thing is applicable for everything ranging from the smallest concepts you hold dear to the more complex stuff like education and love! When we experience some turbulence in aspects wherein we have already invested a lot of time, we tend to go long distances amending it till we finally decide to give up! The same philosophy applies to Design as well. Let us start with an example

A client comes in with a brief, saying he wants to do something out of the box! The requirements are easy, say build a reminder application. There are other aspects mentioned in the document stating, the colours should be vibrant, there should be gestures and easier ways to navigate from one screen to another! As always, the deadline is tight and clients almost need the first draft the same day!

The pressure of the timeline will put the designers who use the computer to start the process; directly on the blank document. They will create some screens and flows and export them to a presentable format with annotations and everything! At most these designers can work on a couple of concepts, max, till the end of the day. Also, they would have made the diagrams on a computer where the lines are straight and the smallest misalignment can start looking odd. The effort they put into this in a single day would be undoubtedly, pretty high! When they take that in front of the client, the client might be or might not be happy with the concept. Although, since these were made on a computer, they might start commenting upon spacing, fonts used, absence or presence of shadows, misalignments and many cosmetic attributes which might even overshadow a strong concept beneath it! If the client is happy with the concepts, it is still fine! But if they are not, then these designers will face a difficult time discarding everything. The better option they might use would be to create a copy and start modifying it. This, in turn, restricts the designers to work within the first concept they had created!  

Now let's discuss the tool that I was talking about in the very title of this article. This tool is nothing but a piece of paper (A4, easily available) and a pen! The advantage of using these tools are:

You can scribble fast. At the speed of your thought. Ideas are highly volatile substances. They cannot be contained very easily. You might have a breakthrough, but by the time you go to your computer, locate the screen you wish to work upon, 50% of it would have sublimated. It is better to keep scribbling them down immediately so that you can improve them when you go to machines. 

You can make the client focus on Inner beauty The concept behind any UI design is the soul. Presenting the ideas in the sketch form, makes the client focus on the flow rather than other elements like line thickness, fonts, spacing. It would be even OK if you miss an element or two from the last screen unless everything you need on that peculiar screen is in its place

Putting less effort is like a fling. You invest less of youself in the idea, very easy for you to discard it if the client says it needs improvement. You don't get into a serious relationship(!) with the concept and you can easily let them go!

A new start, every single time! Since you are sketching the concepts, you work on the same UI piece again and again. Every time you change the paper, you have a fresh start! No obligations, breakthroughs every time you start. It is said that if you are creating something new, the fewer references you go through, the more original your idea would become! Using elements from the last file you worked on might sometimes push you towards the same concept again!

Vent out your frustration (Personal favourite)Paper makes a great sound when torn or crumpled. This helps me get my frustration out. This is something you can't do with your machines!

Working on paper is also advantageous if you are working with startups, who are still defining the elements of the application. Changes can be accommodated very fast till the team is sure about what to retain in the app and what can come later!

The approach many designers are taking in India to save time might have worked sometime back in history, otherwise would have never got so popular! But let me tell you another aspect of it. This kind of approach might work only when you have a well-structured requirements document along with all the task flows and information architecture well covered and detailed out. Today the world is going towards agile development. Everyone wants to build MVPs and produce faster results. So the entire documentation approach has been given very small time as the requirements are still evolving based on the responses received from the users. So basically a designer has to absorb everything s/he can in a small time and jump to the layout design as fast as s/he possibly can. Taking into account the time required for making the wireframes or even block diagrams on a computer, people tend to miss a thorough read on the requirements and IA, which is hazardous for the entire product in the long run!

Every day a new startup comes with a new tool with more intuitive UI to create wireframes, pushing the life of a designer deeper into the digital paradigm. Examples of really fascinating apps would be Adobe Comp CC on iPad and WireFlow on android phones, which allow you to build wireframes on the go. But to be honest, nothing beats the intuitiveness, easiness and simplicity of the best tool known to mankind, pen and paper!