Prototyping

12 Key excerpts on "Prototyping"

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  eBook - ePub

  Mastering UX Design with Effective Prototyping

  Turn your ideas into reality with UX prototyping (English Edition)

  • Apurvo Ghosh(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • BPB Publications

    (Publisher)

  Similarly, while cooking a dish, you can write down a recipe to test, and update the ingredients depending on how the results tasted. Similarly, this book is also a prototype. The technologies and the tools explained in this book will continue to evolve, and I would keep writing the updated versions.

  Prototyping is the process of creating a design idea only for testing and assessment purposes. As per the Collins dictionary, the definition for prototype is, “A prototype is a new type of machine or device which is not yet ready to be made in large numbers and sold .”

  Prototype is a design model that helps teams apply ideas and test them on users, which would tell them how the final product works. Accordingly, they can improve and corroborate the designs, which would help the organization release the right products. They let you experience how the product would work, how the screen transitions would work, and consequently, allow you to test the usability and completeness of the design. But many people from the non-IT and IT fraternity think that prototypes are finished products, which is absolutely ludicrous. Designers tend to create prototypes that have a certain degree of fidelity associated with them. In reality, prototypes can have any type of fidelity you need – from paper sketches to fully realized designs. Depending on what your clients’ requirement is, they can simulate a small or entire part of the interaction of how the application is supposed to work.

  In other words, Prototyping a product is important because it has the following characteristics:

  • It provides an accurate test of the design and its intended function.
  • It allows the prototype design to be tested in its environment. The possible design issues, which came up during the testing process, can be highlighted and updated ahead of the creation of the final product.

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  Available until 30 Nov |Learn more

  Interaction Design

  Beyond Human-Computer Interaction

  • Helen Sharp, Jennifer Preece, Yvonne Rogers(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 2 , “The Process of Interaction Design,” in which solutions or concepts are created, prototyped, tested, and iterated. The final product emerges iteratively through repeated design-evaluation-redesign cycles involving users, and prototypes facilitate this process. There are two aspects to design: the conceptual part, which focuses on the idea of a product, and the concrete aspect, which focuses on the details of the design. The former involves developing a conceptual model that captures what the product will do and how it will behave, while the latter is concerned with the details of the design, such as menu types, haptic feedback, physical widgets, and graphics. The two are intertwined, and concrete design issues will require some consideration in order to prototype ideas, and Prototyping ideas will lead to an evolution of the concept.

  For users to evaluate the design of an interactive product effectively, designers prototype their ideas. In the early stages of development, these prototypes may be made of paper and cardboard, or ready-made components pulled together to allow evaluation, while as the design progresses, they become more polished, tailored, and robust so that they resemble the final product.

  This chapter presents the activities involved in progressing a set of requirements through the cycles of Prototyping and construction. The next section explains the role and techniques of Prototyping and then explores how prototypes may be used in the design process. The chapter ends by discussing physical computing and software development kits (SDKs), which provide a basis for construction.

  12.2 Prototyping

  It is often said that users can't tell you what they want, but when they see something and get to use it, they soon know what they don't want. Prototyping provides a concrete manifestation of an idea—whether it is a new product or a modification of an existing one—which allows designers to communicate their ideas and users to try them out.

  12.2.1 What Is a Prototype?

  A prototype is one manifestation of a design that allows stakeholders to interact with it and to explore its suitability. It is limited in that a prototype will usually emphasize one set of product characteristics and de-emphasize others (see Box 12.2

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  eBook - PDF

  Entrepreneurship

  • William D. Bygrave, Andrew Zacharakis(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Prototyping can lead to new insights about an entrepreneurial opportunity, signal venture readiness to potential investors, and shorten time-to-market. What Is Prototyping? Prototyping is the process of quickly putting together working models (i.e., prototypes) to represent ideas, test various aspects of a design, and gather early customer feedback. Prototyping can help entrepreneurs develop, test and refine their entrepreneurial idea, ideally resulting in the confirmation of an entrepreneurial opportunity. In many cases, a prototype can be as simple as a sketch of a product concept, the basic design for a web landing page, or a simulation of new service concept. The core purpose of the Prototyping process and developing a prototype is to get a response from a target customer or user—in other words, feedback that can be acted on. Taken together, responses from many potential customers can help an entrepreneur decide what directions to pursue (or not pursue) with a new innovation or venture. Too often entrepreneurs are narrowly focused on their pet product and venture idea; the Prototyping process forces the entrepreneur to get out in the field and engage potential customers, all with the intent of learning and iterating rapidly. Representing Assumptions Testing Assumptions Learning & Iterating Figure 4.1 The Prototyping process: representing and testing assumptions The Prototyping process focuses on the representation and testing of assump- tions, ultimately to drive deeper learning about an entrepreneurial opportunity (see Figure 4.1). If you think about it, any new product (the iPhone, cloud storage, a consumer good) is just a set of assumptions about what a target customer values and is willing to pay for. If the core assumptions are correct, then that product is much more likely to succeed in the marketplace. Conversely, products and services that fail in the marketplace are generally based on incorrect assumptions about what a target market values.

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  Interaction Design

  Beyond Human-Computer Interaction

  • Yvonne Rogers, Helen Sharp, Jennifer Preece(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  1 2 . 2 P R O T O T Y P I N G 443 12.2 Prototyping Prototyping provides a concrete manifestation of an idea—whether it is a new product or a modification of an existing one—which allows designers to communicate their ideas and for others to try them out. 12.2.1 What Is a Prototype? A prototype is one manifestation of a design that allows stakeholders to interact with it and to explore its suitability. It is limited in that a prototype will usually emphasize one set of product characteristics and de-emphasize others (see Box 12.2). Prototypes take many forms, for example, a scale model of a building or a bridge, or a piece of software with limited capa- bilities. A prototype can also be a paper-based outline of a display, a collection of wires and ready-made components, a digital picture, a video simulation, a complex piece of software and hardware, or a three-dimensional mockup of a workstation. In fact, a prototype can be anything from a paper-based storyboard to a complex piece of software and from a cardboard mockup to a molded or pressed piece of metal. For example, when the idea for the PalmPilot (a precursor to mobile and smartphones, introduced in 1992) was being developed, Jeff Hawkins (founder of the company) carved up a piece of wood about the size and shape of the device he had imagined (see Figure 12.1). rooted in mutual learning between designers and people; and (iv) seeing human beings as skill- ful and resourceful in developing future technologies. A key aim is for a project’s achievements to be sustained or developed beyond the project. Participatory design approaches have been used in diverse domains including youth men- tal health (Orlowski et al., 2019), food sustainability (Nichols and Heitlinger, 2022), and maths teaching with visually impaired children (Pires et al., 2022). But there are challenges around the nature of participation, especially in current glo- balized conditions (Kruger et al., 2019).

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  Entrepreneurship

  • Andrew Zacharakis, William D. Bygrave(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Prototyping can lead to new insights about an entrepreneurial opportunity, signal venture readiness to potential investors, and shorten time‐to‐market. What Is Prototyping? Prototyping is the process of quickly putting together working models (i.e., prototypes) to rep- resent ideas, test various aspects of a design, and gather early customer feedback. Prototyping can help entrepreneurs develop, test, and refine their entrepreneurial idea, ideally resulting in the confirmation of an entrepreneurial opportunity. In many cases, a prototype can be as simple as a sketch of a product concept, the basic design for a web landing page, or a simulation of new service concept. The core purpose of the Prototyping process and developing a prototype is to get a response from a target customer or user—in other words, feedback that can be acted on. Taken together, responses from many potential customers can help an entrepreneur decide what directions to pursue (or not pursue) with a new innovation or venture. Too often entrepreneurs are narrowly focused on their pet product and venture idea; the Prototyping process forces the entrepre- neur to get out in the field and engage potential customers, all with the intent of learning and iterating rapidly. The Prototyping process focuses on the representation and testing of assumptions, ultimately to drive deeper learning about an entrepreneurial opportunity (see Figure 4.1). If you think about it, any new product (the iPhone, cloud storage, a consumer good) is just a set of assumptions about what a target customer values and is willing to pay for. If the core assumptions are correct, then that product is much more likely to succeed in the marketplace. Conversely, products and services that fail in the marketplace are generally based on incorrect assumptions about what a target market values.

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  Rapid Prototyping

  Principles and Applications2nd Edition(with Companion CD-ROM)

  • C K Chua, K F Leong;C S Lim;;(Authors)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • WSPC

    (Publisher)

  2 Rapid Prototyping: Principles and Applications A prototype is the first or original example of something that has been or will be copied or developed; it is a model or preliminary version; e.g.: A prototype supersonic aircraft. Figure 1.1: A general definition of a prototype However, in design, it often means more than just an artefact. It has often been used as a verb, e.g. prototype an engine design for engineering evaluation, or as an adjective, e.g. build a prototype printed circuit board (PCB). To be general enough to be able to cover all aspects of the meaning of the word prototype for use in design, it is very loosely defined here as: An approximation of a product (or system) or its components in some form for a definite purpose in its implementation. This very general definition departs from the usual accepted concept of the prototype being physical. It covers all kinds of prototypes used in the product development process, including objects like mathematical models, pencil sketches, foam models, and of course the functional physical approximation of the product. Prototyping is the process of realizing these prototypes. Here, the process can range from just an execution of a computer program to the actual building of a functional prototype. 1.1.2 Types of Prototypes The general definition of the prototype contains three aspects of interests: (1) the implementation of the prototype; from the entire product (or system) itself to its sub-assemblies and components, (2) the form of the prototype; from a virtual prototype to a physical prototype, and Chapter 1: Introduction 3 (3) the degree of the approximation of the prototype; from a very rough representation to an exact replication of the product. The implementation aspect of the prototype covers the range of Prototyping the complete product (or system) to Prototyping part of, or a sub-assembly or a component of the product.

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  Interaction Design

  Beyond Human-Computer Interaction

  • Jennifer Preece, Helen Sharp, Yvonne Rogers(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Broadly speaking, the design process may start from two distinct situations: when starting from scratch or when modifying an existing product. Much of design comes from the latter, and it is tempting to think that additional features can be added, or existing ones tweaked, without extensive investigation, Prototyping, or evaluation. Although Prototyping and evaluation activities can be reduced if changes are not signiicant, they are still valuable and should not be skipped. In Chapter 10, we discussed some ways to identify user needs and establish require- ments. In this chapter, we look at the activities involved in progressing a set of requirements through the cycles of Prototyping to construction. We begin by explaining the role and tech- niques of Prototyping and then explain how prototypes may be used in the design process. We end with an exploration of physical computing and software development kits (SDKs) that provide a basis for construction. 11.2 Prototyping It is often said that users can’t tell you what they want, but when they see something and get to use it, they soon know what they don’t want. Having established some requirements, the next step is to try out design ideas through Prototyping and evaluation cycles. 11.2.1 What Is a Prototype? A prototype is one manifestation of a design that allows stakeholders to interact with it and to explore its suitability; it is limited in that a prototype will usually emphasize one set of product characteristics and de-emphasize others. When you hear the term prototype, you may imagine a scale model of a building or a bridge, or a piece of software that crashes every few minutes. A prototype can also be a paper-based outline of a display, a collection of wires and ready-made components, an electronic picture, a video simulation, a complex piece of software and hardware, or a three-dimensional mockup of a workstation.

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  eBook - ePub

  Dynamic Modelling of Information Systems

  • K.M. van Hee, H.G. Sol(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • North Holland

    (Publisher)

  strawman Prototyping. In fact, it will be argued that Prototyping should be thought of as a primary technique for validating and refining the conceptual model for a system. Before elaborating this argument, it will be helpful to discuss Prototyping in greater detail.

  In general, the purpose of a prototype is to learn something about a proposed system during the early stages of development, to avoid the excessive cost of discovering important mistakes later on. A prototype will be said to be cost-effective to the extent that it delivers useful results of this kind sufficiently early in the development process.

  2.1 Evaluative Prototyping to reduce risk

  One of the primary uses of Prototyping is to reduce risk in the software development process by facilitating the early resolution of uncertainty. To do this, a Prototyping effort must be focused appropriately. Though it may be tempting to begin by Prototyping some technical aspect of a proposed design, this does not always (or even often) address the areas of greatest risk in an information system effort. Often the areas that most deserve Prototyping effort will have to do with functionality, user interface, system integration, reliability, and performance. These aspects bear directly on the ultimate success of the system in its target environment. They are also all closely tied to the choice of an appropriate conceptual model, as discussed below (Section 3.2 ).

  In cases where the uncertainties in a software development effort involve relatively objective questions, such as whether a given technique will work or not, Prototyping can often provide an answer by direct experimentation. For example, technical or performance uncertainties may be resolved by building a prototype that demonstrates that a proposed implementation approach produces a feasible solution to a technical problem. Similarly, system integration uncertainties may be addressed by building a prototype that demonstrates that a proposed approach actually works with existing systems, databases, or networks. These are examples of “demonstration proofs” where the prototype proves that something is possible by actually doing it (though differences in scale or other constraints between the prototype and the proposed system may still leave some residual uncertainty as to whether this “proof is valid).

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  Human-Computer Interaction

  Development Process

  • Andrew Sears, Julie A. Jacko, Andrew Sears, Julie A. Jacko(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  Prototyping is primarily a design activity, al-though we use software engineering to ensure that software prototypes evolve into technically sound working systems and we use scientific methods to study the effectiveness of particu-lar designs. PROTOTYPES AS DESIGN ARTIFACTS We can look at prototypes as both concrete artifacts in their own right or as important components of the design process. When viewed as artifacts, successful prototypes have several charac-teristics: They support creativity, helping the developer to cap-ture and generate ideas, facilitate the exploration of a design space, and uncover relevant information about users and their work practices. They encourage communication, helping de-signers, engineers, managers, software developers, customers, and users to discuss options and interact with each other. They also permit early evaluation since they can be tested in various ways, including traditional usability studies and informal user feedback, throughout the design process. We can analyze prototypes and Prototyping techniques along four dimensions: • Representation describes the form of the prototype, such as sets of paper sketches or computer simulations; • Precision describes the level of detail at which the prototype is to be evaluated, such as informal and rough or highly polished; • Interactivity describes the extent to which the user can ac-tually interact with the prototype, such as “watch only” or fully interactive; • Evolution describes the expected life cycle of the prototype, such as throwaway or iterative. Representation Prototypes serve different purposes and thus take different forms. A series of quick sketches on paper can be considered a prototype; so can a detailed computer simulation. Both are use-ful; both help the designer in different ways. We distinguish be-tween two basic forms of representation: offline and online. Offline prototypes (also called “paper prototypes”) do not require a computer.

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  Biodesign

  The Process of Innovating Medical Technologies

  • Stefanos Zenios, Josh Makower, Paul Yock, Todd J. Brinton, Uday N. Kumar, Lyn Denend, Thomas M. Krummel(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  If one wants to sell a product OTC, or if insurance providers try to push a product OTC, and the product requires technical training, then there may be a problem. If simplifying the current product is not a possibility, then the product may not be feasible. 340 4.5 Prototyping Introduction If “a picture is worth a thousand words,” then in the medtech field, “a prototype is worth a thousand pictures.” Fundamentally, there is no substitute for taking all of the conceptual, abstract thinking that has been performed to date and giving it a physical form. Simple concepts can be fraught with problems or result in elegant, effective solutions. Complex ideas can lead to revolutionary results or be impossible to achieve. The only way to find out is to start Prototyping. The goal of Prototyping is to translate a promising concept from an idea into a rudimentary design, and then into a working form. Prototyping is an essential step through which the innovator learns about functional- ity, explores features, gathers preliminary feedback from target users, and answers questions that can only be resolved through the manifestation of the design. Prototyping plays a role at multiple stages of the biodesign innov- ation process. Early on, Prototyping can be performed quickly and inexpen- sively to help the innovator evaluate multiple solution ideas against more specific design criteria before deciding on a final concept. As the innovator moves forward, prototype requirements, designs, and models become more advanced. These more robust prototypes are used to test functionality and features, often in conjunction with tissue and animal testing. Near-final pro- totypes that meet design requirements are used in gathering data for quality documentation and preparation for manufacturing. Across these different stages, the underlying principles of effective Prototyping remain the same. OBJECTIVES Understand how to approach • Prototyping and the types of questions it can help address.

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  Human Computer Interaction Handbook

  Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies, and Emerging Applications, Third Edition

  • Julie A. Jacko(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  (From Perkins, R., D. S. Keller, and F. Ludolph. 1997. Inventing the Lisa user interface. ACM Interact 4(1):40–53. With permission.) 1085 Prototyping Tools and Techniques and building the system through constant evolution of its com-ponents. Evolutionary prototypes require more planning and practice than the approaches above because the prototypes are both representations of the final system and the final system itself, making it more difficult to explore alternative designs. We advocate a combined approach, beginning with rapid prototypes and then using iterative or evolutionary prototypes according to the needs of the project. A later section describes how to create iterative and evolutionary prototypes, using appropriate development tools. 47.3 PROTOTYPES AND THE DESIGN PROCESS In the previous section, we looked at prototypes as artifacts, that is, the results of a design process. Prototypes can also be seen as artifacts for design, as an integral part of the design process. Prototyping helps designers think: prototypes are the tools they use to solve design problems. In this section, we focus on Prototyping as a process and its relationship to the overall design process. 47.3.1 U SER -C ENTERED D ESIGN The field of HCI is both user centered (Norman and Draper 1986) and iterative. User-centered design places the user at the center of the design process, from the initial analysis of user requirements to testing and evaluation. Prototypes sup-port this goal by allowing users to see and experience the final system long before it is built. Designers can identify functional requirements, usability problems, and perfor-mance issues early and improve the design accordingly. Iterative design involves multiple design-implement-test loops,* enabling the designer to generate different ideas and successively improve upon them. Prototypes support this goal by allowing designers to evaluate concrete representa-tions of design ideas and select the best.

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  Contextual Design

  Defining Customer-Centered Systems

  • Karen Holtzblatt, Hugh Beyer(Authors)
  • 1997(Publication Date)
  • Morgan Kaufmann

    (Publisher)

  Its the customers who will have to live with the new system. If it's an internal system, they have a right to say how the work they do will change. If it's a commercial product, it won't be bought if it doesn't meet people's real needs. And unless it works well for customers, both internal and com-mercial systems will fail. So the challenge for design is to include them in the process to iterate, refine, and extend the initial design concept put together by the team. The starting point is an initial design concept. Any Prototyping process starts from an initial prototype, which designer and user refine. It's always easier to renovate an existing design than to start from a totally blank slate. But because prototyp-ing is iterative, it's hard to make fundamental changes to the initial concept, so you want to be sure the first cut addresses the right issues. It's also easier to renovate if you're starting with something reasonably close to what you want. Parts 1-5 were about how to get to a good starting point—all the effort that went into understanding the customer's work and needs ensures that your initial design is addressing the right problems and has a reasonable structure. Now, we need to get the details right. U S I N G P A P E R P R O T O T Y P E S T O D R I V E D E S I G N In Contextual Design, we borrow the idea of rough mock-ups from Participatory Design by introducing very rough prototypes in paper to start the co-designing with users. The goal of the prototype is not to A prototype defines limits on what will be co-designed 372 Chapter 17 Prototyping as a Design Tool provide a demo; prototypes are a prop in a contextual interview, enabling the user to play out the experience of living with the new system. By acting out their real work in the proto-Put the customer's real data in the prototype Let the customer do real work in the paper system Paper invites conversation about structure type, customers can make their unarticulated knowl-edge explicit.

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