WHY IS PAPER PROTOTYPING STILL THE BEST TOOL?

Before we understand paper prototyping vs digital, one needs to understand the power of an eraser.  Some studies suggest that humans forget approx 50% of new information within an hour of learning it. That goes up to an average of 70% within 24 hours.  That said,  the biggest difference between a digital medium and paper is the concurrent use of multiple motors to perform a single task.  While pencil and eraser are obviously the easiest,  using a digital pen or a digital medium  demands expertise, manage multiple motors and firm stable hands.  Although Digital mediums have evolved over time and more professionals have moved into digital mediums,  Paper prototyping has its own benefits.  Most important being the users and ease of use.  Any one can use a white board or a sticky note to insert, modify or add a few screen  or a component with ease.  This is not possible with a digital medium.  On the other hand speed and  sharing volume management is more efficient  on digital medium.   The risk of  loosing  / misplacing a screen is almost  zero  in the digital world as organising  has scaled to exponential levels in the digital world.  Even though the digital methodologies provides versatility and. Scalability to the designs,  I still believe in retaining and voting for the paper prototyping as the best medium to develop effective and simpler initial visual solutions.    Below are some of the reasons I could identify. 

1.  Simplicity and Ease of use across the trained and untrained.  
2. Quicker medium to sketch and share
3. All you need is a pen and a few papers to Mockup
4. Stick it anywhere and share your ideas in the purest form.
5. Scalable editable and developed using simple common languages that the users speak
6. Simple hand drawn designs for quicker reviews and common agreements
7. Easy  conversions into digital formats with reduced iterations 
8. Create Accurate and optimized navigation designs  from a mutually agreed requirements
9. Effective transition from business requirements  to the end development 
10. Drives quality deliverable and word class UX through transparent UX development cycle. 

Softwares like Sketch, Figma  and Axure are effective but usable only by trained  UX professionals and demands a fraction more of time and effort when compared to a simple sketch on the paper.  Also - It is of less importance for the end user to know how we deliver the solutions as long as they know we are on track.   User experience and design is  all about developing solutions that are simple  and intuitive in design.   Paper prototyping neither requires hardware  or software support to provide spot solutions to our stake holders,.   It is also scientifically  proven that  our ability to script  our expressions using a pen has been effective  for centuries. Science just brought sophistication into it to make it better.  When do we use the software tools? Paper prototyping is effective to reduce iterations during the initial cycles.  Once we have the flow aligned with the requirements,  it is ready to  be taken into the digital mediums for further refinements and to move forward.  Keeping it simple is the essence of every design.  Paper prototyping is a language to bridge the end users and there requirements.  It is important we understand  the importance of  peoples languages and the professionals languages.  This is the first step of an effective UX design.