But its a good point you make. A number of the techniques I mention will in some way be prototyping techniques – wireframes, html storyboards, paper based prototypes, mockups.

Wireframes are really useful when you want to talk to the site owner / client though. Really useful because they can’t say “but I don’t like that font” and “can’t we have the navigation on the right in HOT PINK like a site I saw last week”? Another trick is even when you go to the next step keep anything on the page in greyscale because colours can be a major distraction not only to how you move forward but also to the client who will ring at 11pm on Friday night and demand to know why that border around each paragraph is RED?! God forbid one would work on the prototype and incrementally improve it wot!

K gotta run. Glad you noticed the series (there’s a lot of cross overs with these techniques and people develop hybrids that work with their process in many cases). Cheers mate.

I’ve got some links to good articles on this – would you like them? Is it helpful if I added them here in another comment, or mailed them to you Steven?