HCI Theory & Practice - Prototyping

At this stage of the project, we will now analyse “prototyping” and its practicality in our user-centered design project.


Image Reference: (Beale et al, Human-Computer Interaction, 2004) Figure 5.14

Please click above for a larger screenshot

In our last meeting, Russell discussed with us the purpose of the prototype in the overall design of the project. On the Human Computer Interaction module homepage, there is an interesting report which analyses the role prototyping has in developing systems: -

“Prototyping is increasingly used as a vehicle for developing and demonstrating visions of innovative systems.”
(Baumer et al. 1996)

We feel this quote really reflects the aim of the concept of prototyping. When analysing prototyping in the context of User-Centered Design, it really provides the opportunity for designers to use the accumulation of knowledge derived from analysing persona's and scenarios, hence, prototyping is a key component in the User-Centered Design.

However, there are pitfalls to prototyping, as the method very much follows a hill-climbing approach. If our initial prototype design concept is bad, after refinement, we may end up with a final design that is simply a more cleaned up version of the initial prototype design. Therefore it is important that after the prototype design, we evaluate our findings against our persona's, using techniques such as scenario questionnaires and a further critical appraisal based around the results of our findings.

It is important that any issues raised during the evaluation of our initial prototype will help us in understanding what is wrong and how we can improve the prototype from this starting point. Only then we can avoid a situation described earlier regarding the problem with the high climbing approach in prototyping.