The ‘role’ of a designer has been a topic of discussion several many years now. In the past decade, the role of a Designer got split into several different roles like — Graphic Designer, User Experience Designer, Interaction Designer, etc.

设计师的“角色”多年来一直是讨论的话题。 在过去的十年中，设计师的角色被划分为多个不同的角色，例如图形设计师，用户体验设计师，交互设计师等。

Similarly, design has also evolved drastically. We went from focusing solely on physical/print design to web designing, to now designing for several forms of screens. (Linking this wonderful article that talks about this evolution)

同样，设计也发生了巨大的变化。 我们从仅专注于物理/印刷设计到网页设计，再到现在为多种形式的屏幕设计。 (链接 这篇 讨论这种演变的 精彩 文章 )

Let’s focus on the last one for a moment, because that is where we are right now — As designers, our focus and goal now are to create delightful experiences that work out all sorts of devices; that can also be consumed by the audience we intend to target. The designs go through their usual cycle of iterations and testing before they can be approved by the clients or stakeholders.

让我们暂时关注最后一个，因为那是我们现在的位置。作为设计师，我们现在的重点和目标是创造可用于各种设备的令人愉悦的体验。 也可以由我们打算定位的受众群体吸收。 在客户或利益相关者批准之前，设计要经历其通常的迭代和测试周期。

Up until a few years ago (in some cases, even now), the designs we’d create with a lot of love and care would be shared with our clients in the form of PDFs. Every single design software would offer to convert the designs created into a shareable PDFs or JPGs (they still do). Once in the stakeholders’ inbox, it was up to them to view it in the order we’d send. There was absolutely no way for them to identify the touch-points or follow a user journey unless it was documented separately.

直到几年前(有时甚至是现在)，我们将以极大的爱心和关怀创造出的设计将以PDF的形式与客户共享。 每个单独的设计软件都会提供将创建的设计转换为可共享的PDF或JPG的功能(它们仍然可以使用)。 进入利益相关者的收件箱后，由他们决定以我们发送的顺序查看它。 除非另行记录，否则他们绝对没有办法确定接触点或跟踪用户旅程。

Even though they might not be our end users, we need to make sure that the experience of the stakeholders is exceptional at all times.

即使他们可能不是我们的最终用户，我们也需要确保利益相关者的经验始终是卓越的。

原型已完全改变了我们的沟通方式！ (Prototyping has completely changed the way we communicate!)

A prototype allows users to interact with what would have been static screens. This makes the experience feel a lot more personal and real than what it would have been. Rather than simply imagining it, users are able to access a functioning replica of the product first-hand and interact with it accordingly. Even if it is not a fancy prototype that has micro-interactions integrated, but a simple prototype that does the job, it would still be a HUGE step up in the experience for the user.

原型允许用户与原先的静态屏幕进行交互。 这使体验比原本的感觉更具个性和真实感。 用户不仅可以简单地想象它，还可以直接访问功能正常的产品副本并进行相应的交互。 即使不是集成了微交互功能的精美原型，而是可以完成工作的简单原型，对于用户来说，仍然是巨大的提升。

Design tools are empowering us designers to do the same.

设计工具使我们的设计师能够做到这一点。

让我们以Invision为例- (Let’s take Invision for example —)

Invision as a tool is primarily used for prototyping. In the initial versions of the software, designers would need to export every single UI screen created into an image, then upload each image. Once the upload was complete, they’d need to go into each and every screen, create a hotspot, and then link it to the subsequent screen. This process continued till all the screens in the prototype were interconnected.

Invision作为一种工具主要用于原型制作。 在软件的初始版本中，设计人员需要将创建的每个UI屏幕导出到图像中，然后上载每个图像。 上传完成后，他们需要进入每个屏幕，创建一个热点，然后将其链接到后续屏幕。 这个过程一直持续到原型中的所有屏幕都相互连接为止。

When Invision figured how important prototyping was in the process of design, Craft as a plugin was introduced. Craft has completely changed the way we create prototypes. A simple click on the ‘C’ key allows the designer to quickly link their artboards to one another and export them into a prototype.

当Invision意识到原型在设计过程中的重要性时，便引入了Craft作为插件。 Craft彻底改变了我们创建原型的方式。 只需单击“ C”键，设计人员就可以快速将他们的画板相互链接，并将其导出到原型中。

给所有设计师的说明– (A note to all designers –)

Make prototyping a part of your process. Whoever might be the consumer of your screens — clients for approval, users for testing, engineers for development; whoever they are, DO NOT hand them static screens.

使原型制作成为您过程的一部分。 谁可能是您屏幕的使用者-要批准的客户，要测试的用户，要开发的工程师； 无论他们是谁，都不要将它们交给静态屏幕。

Even if it a simple click-through prototype, put in the extra minutes or hours to create it, and then deliver your final interactive experience. Being Experience Designers, it should be our goal to offer our users the best possible experience, and static screens simply don’t cut it anymore.

即使是简单的点击型原型，也要花几分钟或几个小时来创建它，然后提供最终的交互式体验。 作为体验设计师，我们的目标应该是为我们的用户提供最佳的体验，而静态屏幕再也不会减少。

升级您的游戏– (Upping your game –)

If you are interested in taking the experience of your designs further up a notch, you can check out the following link to choose a prototyping weapon of choice.

如果您有兴趣进一步提高设计经验，可以查看以下链接，以选择所需的原型武器。

In my very first article, I wrote about the power of micro-interactions. You will find more information about creating interactive prototypes to further improve the user experience of your product in that article. Check it out, and prototype away!

在我的第一篇文章中，我写到了微交互的力量 。 您将在该文章中找到有关创建交互式原型以进一步改善产品的用户体验的更多信息。 检查一下，然后原型化！