Prototyping Design

The group met today to finalize the prototype for our teaching assistant. From analyzing our persona's and scenarios, we formulated our design for the Teaching Assistant: -

Please click on the image for a full sized screenshot

We primarily focused our efforts on 7 key areas, such as Emotions, Height, Movement, Sensors, Speed, Looks/Appearance and Network: -

In terms of Sensors, we analyzed different areas such as vision, touch and hearing. : -

Emotions: -

Movement: -

Network, the Teaching Assistant will have an in-built wireless fidelity card which allows the robot to access local educational network and emergency services: -

As already been stated the teaching assistant will adopt a female look.

Speed - It was important to consider the relative speed the robot will have compared to children. It should be possible that the Robot matches the same motorized speed as that of the walking speed of a child.: -

Other - In this section we detailed any extra functionality of the Teaching Assistant: -

In terms of the Teaching Assistant being waterproof, the robot will have a waterproof fabric laminated onto its 'skin', thereby reducing the risk water may have on the robot.

Furthermore, from this prototyping session, we will be able to draw conceptual designs of the robot.

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Case Study: Waseda Talker No.6

Speech is a very important factor taking into account the environment, the teaching
assistant must be able to express itself in a clear and appropriate manner. The language used must be simplified in order for the children to understand what the teaching assistant is saying. There are a number of robots that offer this functionality, for example, the Waseda Talker No.6 consists of lungs, vocal cords, a tongue, lips and other components to offer speech. The robot can adjust is pitch taking into account the situation, for example, can whisper and shout.

This technology can be incorporated into the teaching assistant to deliver the speech
functionality.



Source

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.