Approaches To Prototyping

"This conference will focus on the user-oriented development of information systems. Against a background of recent concepts for the implementation of distributed systems based on workstation computers, various communicational, organizational and social issues gain increasing importance in the construct ion of computer based information systems. There is an urgent need to integrate end-users and other affected groups into the development process. New strategies for system development are thus needed. " This was the beginning of the Call for Papers to the Working Conference on Prototyping. Working in the fields of user-oriented software construct ion and the analysis of communication problems between developers and users we, that is the GMD team involved in this conference and in preparing its Proceedings, sooner or later came across various new concepts to overcome the problems sketched above. Concepts focusing on the quick construct ion of an operative system such as "rapid prototyping" or concepts aiming at the human and organizational side of the development process such as "Systemeering". Even on a second look, the multitude of different approaches, terms and tools still caused confusion. But despite the differences every concept seemed to have something to do with "Prototyping". This, however, proved to be of little help to us, because the term "Prototyping" itself turned out to be quite "fuzzy". In this obviously confused situation we decided that it was time for a working con ference.

Prototyping is an approach used in evolutionary system development. In this book, the authors show which forms of prototyping can be employed to tackle which problems. They take a look at the tools used in everyday software development with a view to determining their suitability for prototyping, and attempt to elucidate prototyping as a methodological concept. Part I of the book looks at prototyping as an approach for constructing and evaluating models. Traditional approaches and phase-oriented life cycle plans are discussed. Prototyping overcomes fundamental problems associated with life cycle plans. The authors present their own concept of evolutionary system development. Part II shows to what extent technical support of evolutionary system development is possible. Various tools for supporting prototyping are discussed and prospective trends are indicated. Criteria are listed to help the reader choose between the various development environments currently available or likely to become available in the near future. Case studies are used to illustrate how prototype construction can be integrated in software projects.

The cost of producing software worldwide now approaches $250 billion annually--much of it delivered late and over budget. This book offers a better way--prototyping. The author suggests incorporating the input of end-users early on, radically changing the software process itself. Controversial and highly readable.

This book investigates processes for the prototyping of user interfaces for mobile apps, and describes the development of new concepts and tools that can improve the prototype driven app development in the early stages. It presents the development and evaluation of a new requirements catalogue for prototyping mobile app tools that identifies the most important criteria such tools should meet at different prototype-development stages. This catalogue is not just a good point of orientation for designing new prototyping approaches, but also provides a set of metrics for a comparing the performance of alternative prototyping tools. In addition, the book discusses the development of Blended Prototyping, a new approach for prototyping user interfaces for mobile applications in the early and middle development stages, and presents the results of an evaluation of its performance, showing that it provides a tool for teamwork-oriented, creative prototyping of mobile apps in the early design stages.

In this book, the authors describe the findings derived from interaction and cooperation between scientific actors employing diverse practices. They reflect on distinct prototyping concepts and examine the transformation of development culture in their fusion to hybrid approaches and solutions. The products of tomorrow are going to be multifunctional, interactive systems – and already are to some degree today. Collaboration across multiple disciplines is the only way to grasp their complexity in design concepts. This underscores the importance of reconsidering the prototyping process for the development of these systems, particularly in transdisciplinary research teams. “Rethinking Prototyping – new hybrid concepts for prototyping” was a transdisciplinary project that took up this challenge. The aim of this programmatic rethinking was to come up with a general concept of prototyping by combining innovative prototyping concepts, which had been researched and developed in three sub-projects: “Hybrid Prototyping” developed new prototyping approaches to validate and evaluate holistically developed systems with their services, infrastructure and business models. “Blended Prototyping” addressed a new technique whereby prototypes for user interfaces of software applications can be generated from hand drawings and immediately be tested. “Beyond Prototyping” examined the issue of the prototype in connection with algorithmically generated design for producing tailor-made products.

A software prototype is a partial, possible, or preliminary implementation of a proposed new product according to Wiegers and Beatty (2013). Poor requirements are in most cases the major cause of late products with so many bugs and design flaws. An effective prototyping process can reduce cost and improve customer satisfaction and delight (Wilson, 2010). A prototyping with an effective approach can also be used to validate and extract assumptions and requirements that exist among the product team. It is absolutely important to understand that requirements may have unwanted side effects before the creation of the final product which only a prototype can expose. Arnowitz, Arent and Berger (2007) suggested that too often in the software process, design and creation are crammed into the late stages when there is little time available for prototyping and validation, thus leading to high-risk software development. This book will first cover a review of the literature, and secondly it will explore the significance of prototyping and examine its benefits.