Week 9 / Seventh Lecture: Design, Prototyping and Construction. [Wenyong]

"A prototype is an early sample or model built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from."

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype

For this week, we learned about Prototype.

What is a prototype, actually? It can range from being a paper-based outline of a screen/sets of screens, a 3D paper/cardboard mockup, to an electronic 'picture'. Through a prototype, stakeholders will be able to interact with an envisioned product, gain experience with its realistic settings, and explore even more imagined uses. They are a very useful way to express ideas for discussions or communications among team members. At the idea-testing stage of creating a product, users will be able to do user testing and evaluation, check its compatibility with the rest of the system development, and clarify their general requirements.

There are two types of prototyping, which are low-fidelity prototyping and high-fidelity prototyping.

Low-fidelity prototyping:

- does not look like the final product (eg. uses materials very different from final product such as paper/cardboard)

- simple, cheap, easy to produce

- for exploration only; important for conceptual design but not intended to be kept and integrated into final product

- Storyboard

• series of sketches to show how a user can interact with the product
• for example, screens of a GUI-based software, scene sketches showing how a user can perform tasks using an interactive device.

High-fidelity prototyping:

- uses materials expected to be in the final product and looks very much like the real thing (eg. using Visual Basic)

- useful for selling ideas and testing out technical issues

- users may be faced with the following problems:

• a long time is needed to build a high-fidelity prototype
• reviewers and critics may focus too much on the superficial aspects of the prototype rather than the content
• developers would be less willing to do any alterations when they have spent a lot of time and energy on the prototype
• software prototypes are prone to setting high expectations
• a high-fidelity prototype of great scales can bring the entire testing and development stage to a halt

Conceptual design:

- concerns with transforming needs and requirements into a conceptual model

- conceptual model is an outline of what people can do with a product and the concepts needed to understand its functions and abilities

- key guiding principles of a conceptual model:

• keep an open mind but never forget the users and their context
• discuss ideas with other stakeholders as much as possible
• use low-fidelity prototyping to gain rapid feedback
• iterate

- some elements in a conceptual model is based on requirements for the product

- consider these when creating the initial conceptual model:

• Which interface metaphors would be suitable to help users understand the product?
• Which interaction (types) would best support the users' activities?
• Do different interface types suggest alternative design insights or options?

Interface metaphors

- Evaluating metaphors

• A good metaphor will require structure, preferably a familiar one
• One of the difficulties of using metaphors is that the users may think they understand more than they do and start applying inappropriate elements of the metaphors to the system, leading to confusion and false expectations.
• A good metaphor is associated with particular visual and audio elements, as well as words.
• A good metaphor is easily understandable and have extra aspects that are useful.

- Interface types

• Different interface types prompt and support different perspectives on the product under development and suggest different possible behaviours.
• WIMP/GUI interface
• sharable interface
• tangible interface
• advance graphical interface

Reference: lecturer's notes