[IxDA Discuss] What tools do you use for prototyping?

[Katie Albers]

At 9:38 AM -0800 11/8/07, Andrei Herasimchuk wrote:
>On Nov 7, 2007, at 8:46 PM, Eric Scheid wrote:
>
>>  It isn't better *when* (not *if*) it introduces noise, which is 
>>  anything
>>  other than signal. If the user could look at your prototype and 
>>  waste your
>>  time complaining about your *stylistic* colour choices when you are 
>>  trying
>>  to test the *usability* of the functionality, then you are not in a 
>>  better
>>  place.
>
>Yes you are. All data regarding feedback is data you must pay 
>attention to as a designer. If enough people are complaining about 
>your aesthetics while disregarding the stuff you want feedback on, 
>then you obviously have a higher level problem that might need to be 
>solved as well.

To me this argument is like saying that if you test in a room with a 
prism in the window and users spend their time captivated by the 
pretty shiny thing, that is user feedback.

And yes, of course in some senses it is...but ask any school teacher 
-- pretty shiny things are more interesting than work.

In the same sense, blue is everyone's favorite color: people just 
don't agree what color *is* blue...and different monitors in 
different situations will render it differently in any case. How much 
effort do I want to expend in sorting out the "I don't like the 
color" responses from the "I have trouble tracking what to do next" 
responses. And yes, anytime you decide to exclude some element that 
will be in the final product, you are in some sense testing it, but 
it removes focus from the elements that aren't being tested. On the 
other hand, if every tester remarks on the absence of Whatever, then 
you need to assess whether that is a more important element than you 
had believed.

My general preference is to separate the elements that need to be 
tested and test them separately insofar as is possible and then roll 
them progressively into a more nearly complete entity which gets 
tested. Often, when the elements bang up against each other they 
alter previous results, but that enriches previous findings. It 
doesn't render them irrelevant.

And since the question of the car prototype keeps coming up, I would 
just ask that we keep in mind that prototyping a car starts with 
drawings - external, internal, elevations andand so on; then the 
external becomes a clay model that is tested for drag, efficiency, 
etc and refined, while the question of the interior becomes a 
separate set of tasks that -- again -- starts from drawings and 
elevations and becomes more and more tightly specified and measured 
and examined by potential drivers and is tested against human 
ergonomic requirements -- often by doing a mock up of a seat, 
steering wheel and paper prototypes of gauges and controls and so 
on...until gradually you have an actual functioning prototype car. 
And, in the cases as outlined here -- where it isn't just a series of 
tweaks to an existing car -- this is actually referred to as a 
"Concept Car" so you don't confuse it with something you're going to 
see on the street tomorrow. Concept cars are designed for a couple 
reasons (1) they're cool and good publicity and (2) they contain a 
lot of innovations, bits and pieces of which will be used in 
production cars. So far, we've been talking about that process as 
though one day Joe Designer walked into a workshop and built a car 
and then tested it and then rebuilt it after he had the results.

I'm not sure how much of this thread is due simply to differing 
definitions of the word "prototype" and how much is due to different 
processes and how much is due to having worked in different 
situations which imposed different requirements...but I'd be very 
interested in finding out.

Katie
-- 

----------------
Katie Albers
katie at firstthought.com