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We are applying a rapid prototyping process quite successfully in our team. With our new project we have designers and developers separated by a large body of water. Hence our normal approach of jamming in the same room will not work.
Do people have suggestions of tools and / or approaches to help bridge the gap of not being in the same room? Any good examples or experiences they had?
I've also seen people collaborate via document cameras — let me explain. Let's say you and a team member (or a few) want to quickly iterate on a problem, but sending sketches/wireframes back and forth isn't very efficient. Each team member shares their "screen" (a piece of paper) via their document camera and you're in the realm of live paper paper prototyping! You can see what someone is drawing and quickly piggyback off that idea by trying your own sketch.
You can try a doing a digital "whiteboarding" session with all the team members, but I've found these tools still leave a lot to be desired. It does remove the extra step and cost of buying and setting up a document camera.
I'd love to be able to recommend something, because then I had one for myself :-)
I've tried the Teleboard, which sounds really nice as long as you can restrict your collaboration to "post-it" notes. If you say "rapid prototyping process", maybe these are enough. I only tried it, and stopped trying, though, because it's a university prototype and suffers from a number of simple things (e.g., text layout wastes space on notes, zooming by slider only). And it requires special equipment.
I like using the Marvel App. It's very easy to use and can save a lot time on a large variety of projects in different stages such as wireframing or high-fidelity mockups. Also the team is constantly adding features to it making it more and more useful.
I've personally used invision for rapid prototyping but their collaboration tools look great and I'm looking forward to trying them: http://www.invisionapp.com/
They've really put thought into the features that designers would need as well as provided ways to add comments and see previous versions of a particular design.
