Rapid Prototyping with InVision
Video course created for O'Reilly Media focusing on UX prototyping principles over tool features
Note: This was back in the days before AI could vibe code a working prototype in minutes. In 2015, if you wanted a UX prototype that could remember a user's form input and surface it throughout the experience, or let them favorite and sort items in a gallery with real behavioral responses—you had to build that logic yourself, one conditional statement at a time.
About the course
Pluralsight approached me to create an advanced Axure course, and I knew exactly what gap I wanted to fill. Most UX designers could create basic click-through prototypes, but when it came time to present to stakeholders or conduct usability tests, those static prototypes fell flat. Users would try to interact with a search filter or attempt to favorite an item, only to hit a dead end that broke the illusion.
So I designed a course specifically for intermediate to advanced UX designers who needed to create prototypes that could actually behave like the real applications they were designing. We're talking dynamic, data-driven prototypes with sets of repeating data that could be sorted, filtered, and paginated—the kind of sophisticated interactions that make stakeholders go "wait, this isn't the real app?" and let usability test participants engage naturally without constantly bumping into prototype limitations.
Course Details
- Created for: Pluralsight
- Audience: UX Designers
- Skill Level: Intermediate/Advanced
- Duration: 1h 23m
- Release Date: November 2015
- Course Curriculum: See the course on Pluralsight
The learning strategy behind the course
As the instructional designer and course creator, I built this around a core insight: the most powerful prototypes aren't just clickable—they're interactive. Designers taking this course already knew Axure's basic features, so I could dive straight into the advanced stuff that separated good prototypes from great ones.
The course focused on teaching designers how to:
- Who benefits most from realistic prototype behaviors (spoiler: it's your test participants and your credibility with stakeholders)
- What kinds of interactions are worth the complexity (and which ones aren't)
- When to invest the extra time in dynamic behaviors versus simple click-through interactions
- Where conditional logic and if-then statements elevate prototype fidelity without over-engineering
- Why data-driven prototypes create more convincing stakeholder presentations and more natural usability testing experiences
- How to implement repeating data sets that actually respond to user input
Who the course served (and the strategic challenge I solved)
This course targeted UX designers and prototypers who'd moved beyond basic wireframing but were hitting walls when trying to prototype complex, data-heavy applications. Think e-commerce sites, contact management systems, photo galleries, dashboards—all those apps where the data is the experience.
The course also solved a major pain point: instead of creating dozens of static mockups showing every possible table filtering and sorting combination (or trying to wire up all those hotspots on a clickable prototype, or just not prototyping those interactions at all), designers could build one dynamic prototype that actually demonstrated all those states through real user interaction.
I designed the content to serve multiple strategic needs:
- Stakeholder presentations: Create prototypes so realistic that decision-makers could actually envision the final product behavior
- UX research: Build prototypes that let usability test participants interact naturally without constantly explaining "pretend this works"
- Product development: Demonstrate complex interaction patterns and edge cases before development begins
- Advanced prototyping: Master conditional logic and dynamic data handling to tackle any interaction challenge
The technical deep dive
We covered conditional cases, if-then logic, dynamic data manipulation, and all the technical wizardry that makes Axure prototypes feel alive. But I structured everything around practical applications—building an actual prototype of a data-driven web apps that designers could adapt for their own projects.
At 1 hour and 23 minutes, this was concentrated, hands-on learning for designers ready to level up their prototyping game significantly.
The impact
This course filled a specific gap in the prototyping education space: moving beyond basic interactions to create prototypes that could handle real user behaviors and data complexity. The techniques I taught helped designers create more convincing stakeholder presentations and conduct more natural usability tests—ultimately leading to better-informed design decisions.
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There's something nostalgic about a time when dynamic prototypes were still a novelty and you had to convince your product and development partners that the prototype was not shippable code. I almost miss those days. Almost.
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