Week 4 - Types of Prototypes

Today's contact was about types of prototypes.

Firstly there was a discussion between Low Fidelity and High Fidelity prototypes.

Low Fidelity Prototypes are usually created to illustrate a few main concepts , and are static, throw-away, and mostly non-functional, in terms of intended final functionality. An example would be most paper prototypes.

High Fidelity Prototypes are detailed, and interactive, and usually contain parts of a working model of what is intended to be the final product. These take longer to set up, but can provide a realistic indication of what the final product would look like.

Then, Exploratory, Experimental and Operational prototypes.

These reflect different stages in prototype testing.

Exploratory prototypes are on the low-fidelity end of the scale, usually throw-away, used to identify/examine/investigate certain areas of possible investigation.

Experimental prototypes delve further into these possible areas, to valid, and compare certain features.

Operational prototypes are iterative, and have working functions that will be scaled and refined into the final product.

Horizontal, Vertical and Diagonal Prototypes refer to the specifics of features and detail in defining prototype types.

Horizontal prototypes model many features with little detail, and are to gauge an overall interaction through the use of the majority of the intended features of a product.

Vertical prototypes focus on a few features in high detail, and are to explore a small slice of the whole structure of the product.

Diagonal Prototypes are in between and can explore a particular scenario that incorporates some features and some details of each feature.

Global and Local prototypes expand on the definitions of Horizontal and Vertical prototypes.

Global prototypes aim to encompass the entire system, and can cover multiple levels of the prototype.

Local prototypes focus on a single feature to test usability.

For this contact we had two exercises to complete:

Exercise 1

Functional components of a car dashboard include: Steering Wheel, Speedometer, Tachometer, Air-conditioner, heater, Stereo, CD, Radio, Light Indicators, Door Lights, Window Controls.

The components that are related to driving behaviour are ones such as the Steering Wheel, the Gear Shift, Indicator Lights, and more indirectly, the Speedometer and Tachometer.

The steering wheel is the direct input for controlling the direction of the car, the gear shift the speed range/mode the car operates, the indicator lights reflect behaviour of the car to other drivers, and the Speedometer and Tachometer reflect the speed of the car (controlled by foot pedals)

I would test the interactions of the driver between these components and how they affect the functioning of the car (speed, direction, indicators etc). They would be tested through horizontal prototypes, with many functioning features of the dashboard, and vertical prototypes, where single features of the car dashboard would be modelled as a prototype.

Exercise 2

Alarm clock application for your smartphone. 

Can set, edit & delete multiple alarms

Can daisy-chain alarms - if one is allowed to ring

out, another is activated automatically

Can set different tones for different alarms

Shake phone to snooze

Design & describe a horizontal, a vertical & a

diagonal prototype for this application

Horizontal Prototype: Most features included in the Alarm Clock App, however not much detail as to the user interface, visual style, but rather the interaction between the many features. I want to be able to snooze an alarm, hear several alarms, but in a horizontal prototype, it will be less about the specifics of exactly how to do this and more about how different alarms relates to daisy-chaining them, or snoozing them.

Vertical Prototype: A prototype focused on the daisy chaining alarms feature. How long for each alarm to ring out? What alarms should be played out in sequence? What should be displayed while the alarm is ringing?

Diagonal Prototype: Moderate use of features with important details in a scenario-based prototype. Example Scenario: You set your alarm so you can get up for work the next morning. What features should be allowed so that you can wake and get up at the right time? Snooze feature? How about being able to set a 'work' alarm in this diagonal prototype? Here, for a diagonal prototype, the user interface won't be the highest priority, but basic functionality would be required to use these features.