We’ve been trying out different ways to prototype cards for years, and I wanted to quickly share the best thing we’ve found. When we prototype and test, we need to create and print components in a way that is:

1. Fast

2. Cheap

3. Presentable (if not beautiful)

4. Easy to update

There are obvious tradeoffs between these four requirements. Scribbling on note cards is fast and cheap, but it looks terrible and updating cards is tedious and time-consuming. Printing text on printer paper and taping it to old business cards looks slightly better, but it’s still amateurish and takes too long to update. The key to a great process is that we need to be able to make small changes to existing cards, and create wholly new cards very rapidly without sacrificing presentation or spending a lot of money.

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