What is a conceptual design?
A description of the proposed system in terms of a set of integrated ideas and concepts about what it should do, behave, look like, that will be understandable by the users in the manner intended.
How to express early design ideas?
- Allow flexibility for radical changes
- No coding involved
- Fast
- Cheap & low cost
- Promote valuable feedback
What is a prototype?
Rapid approximation of a design idea used to gather feedback. A limited representation of a product design.
What is prototyping?
A strategy for efficiently dealing with things that are hard to predict.
Why prototype?
- Interactive exploration with envisioned product
- Clarifies vague requirements between stakeholders
- Answer questions & support design decisions with forced reflection
- Test feasibility & compatibility
- Sell product ideas
- Inspire innovation
People cannot describe what they want, but they are quick to recognize what they do not like!
Rights of a prototype
- Should not be required to be complete
- Easy to change
- Gets to reitre
What’s a storyboard?
A pencil and paper simulation or walkthrough of system look and functionality.
- Sequence of diagrams
- Series of scene sketches showing progression through a task.
- Conveys key snapshots
- Often used with scenarios to bring details.
What’s a scenario?
- Hypothetical or fictional situations of use
- Typically involving some person, event, situation and environment
- Provide context of operation
- Often in narrative form, but can also be sketches or even videos
- Approach problem from another person’s point of view
- Can involve social and interpersonal aspects of the task
- Can be very futuristic and creative
- Facilitates feedback and opinions
What are the benefits of storyboarding?
- Holistic focus
- Avoid commitments to UI
- Helps get everyone on same page in terms of goal
- Gather early feedback
What should storyboards convey?
Setting, Sequence & Satisfaction
What’s the difference between Lo-Fi and Hi-Fi prototype?
Lofi: Cheap to produce, does not realistically simulate final product and focus on conceptual design instead.
Hifi: Increased similarity to final product, possibly even using same parts and focus on physical design.
What’s low-fidelity prototyping?
- Uses medium (paper/cardboard) unlike final product
- Quick, cheap & easy to modify
- Important early on to encourage creative flexibility & exploration of ideas during conceptual design.
What’s high-fidelity prototyping?
- Simulation or demo of final product to address feasibility & physical design issues
- Uses similar materials and looks like final product.
- May include ‘real code’.
What are some issues with Hi-Fi prototype?
- Costlier to develop
- Set high expectations for users
- Bad performance
- Invisible compromises such as hacked code, sloppy engineering.
What are horizontal prototypes?
Wide range with little details
What are vertical prototypes?
Much detail for few functions.
What are video prototypes?
- Illustrate how users interact with systems
- Used to quickly represent design concepts that are complex
- Story board but includes motivation & success
What are the benefits of video prototypes?
- Cheap & fast
- Great communication tools
- Ties interface designs to task
- Serve as specifications for developers
What is wizard-of-oz prototyping?
- Simulate machine behavior with human operators
- Create interactive application without code
- Much faster than building real thing
- Done early to understand user requirements
What are the benefits of wizard-of-oz?
- Faster, cheaper, more iterative prototypes
- Multiple variations is easy
- More realistic than paper
- Places user at the centre of development
- Envision challenging-to-build applications
- Designer & developers learn by being wizard
What are the disavantages of Wizard-of-Oz?
• May misrepresent otherwise imperfect technology
• May simulate technologies that do not exist (and may never)
• Wizards require training and can be inconsistent
• Playing the wizard can be exhausting
• Some features (and limitations) are difficult/impossible to simulate
effectively
• May be inappropriate or inconvenient in some venues (e.g. home)
