Week 12 - Review of What is a Prototype? (Week 1)

How has your understanding of prototyping changed since week 1?

What would you change about your initial description?

How is that related to your experiences.

In Week 1 I wrote a blog post defining what Prototypes were. I have modified it for this post:

Prototypes are in-progress models used to demonstrate basic concepts of a final product. They are not usually in a finished state; rather several important functions are highlighted for testing in the prototype.

Prototypes can take many forms, from flat, to 3D, to digital; the main purpose is to convey the overall concept of the idea to people. For projects such as car parts, physical moving parts may constitute part of a prototype, where as a prototype for a website could a series of hand-drawn wireframes.

The most basic prototypes can be simply drawn with pen and paper. Depending on the detail and complexity required, prototypes could be made out of clay or wood, or digitally created using software, or uses a combination of both physical and digital components, such as a MakeyMakey (as a custom controller), and a Flash application on a computer.

Prototypes are an important part in determining if the final product will work. Prototypes simplify a product down to the core concepts so that if something isn’t suitable, it can be spotted easily and fixed. They help determine strengths and weaknesses in the product design. The interface of a prototype may not be fully polished, but clear enough for users to test features of the product.

Without prototypes the designer could lose a bit of focus on the practicality of the core concepts of their idea. They might create something that is almost useless in real-life, even though it may stem from a solid idea.

Now, at the end of the DECO2300 course, I have gained hands on experience into digital prototyping and what prototypes really are. Although my Mines Between the Lines prototype progressed significantly from its design stage to functionality, it wasn't complete, but was quite a functioning prototype. From the Week 4 contact I am able to further define my prototype as a sort of diagonal prototype, containing most features, with enough detail to discern between them, but simple graphics. The graphics I used in my Video Prototype to illustrate my game mashup (created in Adobe Illustrator), were very similar if not the same to the ones I used in my prototype in Flash, so there is a familiar point of reference, and gradual refinement of the same idea methodology to those who view my Video prototype and then progress to experimenting with my interactive prototype. Overall my definition of a prototype remains mostly the same, it's just that now I have extra experience in creating prototypes for myself, along with many techniques (CRC Cards, Set-based Design etc).