I have been using paper prototyping for a while now to help with the design of some of the web and smartphone apps that we have been building for Geodica.

There is something quite liberating about moving away from a computer and just using a simple pen and a piece of paper, and even though I am not particularly talented as an artist, it is still possible to produce meaningful and descriptive low-fidelity prototypes with very little hassle. I think the reason pen and paper work so well for prototyping comes down to the simple fact that the form factor and ease-of-use are yet to be exceeded by technology. 

So in the interests of promoting the discipline of paper prototyping, here are some links to products and resources that I have found very useful:

Paper-based UX Workbooks

• UXPin - I have been using the UXPin stuff since it first came out. It has gone through a couple of revisions, and the latest packs have a hard cover and come with lots of extras like personas and stick-on components for on-screen elements. I can thoroughly recommend these packs. It’s also worth following Marcin from UXPin on Twitter at @uxpin. He posts quite a few good links on paper prototyping.
• App Sketchbook - I have not used this one personally, but the products listed on their web site look great. They are simpler than the UXPin versions, and might be useful if you wanted to carry around something more like a notebook.

Wireframe Template Libraries

• Keynotopia - If you want to take your paper prototypes and move them into something more concrete, the Keynotopia template library for Keynote is brilliant. This library contains templates for iPhone, iPad and Android, as well as for MacOSX and Windows. I can’t quite put my finger on why this is true, but I find Keynote a lot easier for building higher-fidelity prototypes than PowerPoint, and this library is a great addition to my toolset.

Other Paper Prototyping Resources

Here are a couple of other paper prototyping and UX resources that you might find useful:

• Paper Prototyping 
• iPhone and iPad Design Templates and How to Use Them
• iPhone and iPad Development GUI Kits, Stencils and Icons

Good luck with pen and paper!

Footnote: I’ve also noticed lately that I spend less and less time using Microsoft Word, and more and more time using TextMate and simple text files, often with MarkDown. I think this is a change in behaviour related to the use of pen and paper for prototyping. When you remove all of the gratuitous visual distractions and the egregious bugs (such as the way bulleted lists and paragraph numbering still do not work properly after *14* releases of the app!), you have a lot more time to focus on *what* you are writing, and much less on *how* you are writing it.

Every time I am forced to do this, a little part of me dies.

A generation of Windows use has taught us that this is an acceptable user interface. #itsnot