Prototyping

Fields of study progress not by understanding more about what already exists, although that is a useful step, but by making guesses about possible better futures. The guesses consist of small forays into those futures, using strategies that are variously called learning through making, research through design, or more simply: prototyping. While traditionally associated primarily with industrial design, and more recently with software development, prototyping is now used as an important tool in areas ranging from materials engineering to landscape architecture to the digital humanities. This book collects current theories and methods of prototyping across a dozen disciplines and illustrates them through case studies of actual projects, whether in industry or the classroom. Prototyping Across the Disciplines provides context, a theoretical framework, and a set of methodologies for interdisciplinary collaboration in design. Each chapter offers a different disciplinary perspective on prototyping and provides a case study as a point of comparison for identifying commonalities and divergences in current practices. In examining the central role of prototyping in design research, this edited collection demonstrates theoretical and methodological transferability across disciplines not typically thought to be related, including post-human design, theatre, tabletop game design, landscape architecture, and arts entrepreneurship.

Do you spend a lot of time during the design process wondering what users really need? Do you hate those endless meetings where you argue how the interface should work? Have you ever developed something that later had to be completely redesigned? Paper Prototyping can help. Written by a usability engineer with a long and successful paper prototyping history, this book is a practical, how-to guide that will prepare you to create and test paper prototypes of all kinds of user interfaces. You'll see how to simulate various kinds of interface elements and interactions. You'll learn about the practical aspects of paper prototyping, such as deciding when the technique is appropriate, scheduling the activities, and handling the skepticism of others in your organization. Numerous case studies and images throughout the book show you real world examples of paper prototyping at work. Learn how to use this powerful technique to develop products that are more useful, intuitive, efficient, and pleasing: * Save time and money - solve key problems before implementation begins * Get user feedback early - use it to focus the development process * Communicate better - involve development team members from a variety of disciplines * Be more creative - experiment with many ideas before committing to one *Enables designers to solve design problems before implementation begins *Five case studies provide real world examples of paper prototyping at work *Delves into the specifics of what types of projects paper prototyping is and isn't good for.

Prototyping is a great way to communicate the intent of a design both clearly and effectively. Prototypes help you to flesh out design ideas, test assumptions, and gather real-time feedback from users. With this book, Todd Zaki Warfel shows how prototypes are more than just a design tool by demonstrating how they can help you market a product, gain internal buy-in, and test feasibility with your development team.

Now in its second edition, Prototyping and Modelmaking for Product Design, by practising product development consultant Bjarki Hallgrimsson, is essential reading for both students and design professionals. Prototyping and ModelMaking for Product Design goes behind the scenes to illustrates how prototypes are used to help designers understand problems better, explore more imaginative solutions, investigate human interaction more fully and test functionality so as to de-risk the design process. Following an introduction on the purpose of prototyping, specific materials, tools and techniques are examined in detail, with step-by-step tutorials and industry examples of real and successful products illustrating how prototypes are used to help solve design problems. Workflow is also discussed, using a mixture of hands-on and digital tools. This new edition includes case studies representing technological developments such as prototyping user experience and interactive electronic products, as well as a new expanded section on digital modelmaking tools, including 3D printing and laser cutting. The first chapters of the book explain why prototyping is so important to the design process. The many uses of prototyping will be shown in the context of several comprehensive projects by some of the world's leading design firms. The second part is an introduction to the typical materials used by designers in their prototyping efforts and how to work with them. In all cases, the approach is to use digital and manual tools in a complementary and effective fashion. Tutorials were specifically developed that underline the back and forth of digital and manual ways of working. The emphasis is on the kinds of construction that can be done by the designers themselves. Health and safety is stressed in terms of personal responsibility and awareness. Topics covered include:Definition of prototyping and modelmakingPrototyping as a form of problem solvingModelmakingPhysical and digital prototypesBuidling by hand and using digital technologies

Effective Prototyping for Software Makers is a practical, informative resource that will help anyone—whether or not one has artistic talent, access to special tools, or programming ability—to use good prototyping style, methods, and tools to build prototypes and manage for effective prototyping. This book features a prototyping process with guidelines, templates, and worksheets; overviews and step-by-step guides for nine common prototyping techniques; an introduction with step-by-step guidelines to a variety of prototyping tools that do not require advanced artistic skills; templates and other resources used in the book available on the Web for reuse; clearly-explained concepts and guidelines; and full-color illustrations and examples from a wide variety of prototyping processes, methods, and tools. This book is an ideal resource for usability professionals and interaction designers; software developers, web application designers, web designers, information architects, information and industrial designers. * A prototyping process with guidelines, templates, and worksheets; * Overviews and step-by-step guides for 9 common prototyping techniques; * An introduction with step-by-step guidelines to a variety of prototyping tools that do not require advanced artistic skills; * Templates and other resources used in the book available on the Web for reuse; * Clearly-explained concepts and guidelines; * Full-color illustrations, and examples from a wide variety of prototyping processes, methods, and tools. * www.mkp.com/prototyping

Prototyping and user testing is the best way to create successful products, but many designers skip this important step and use gut instinct instead. By explaining the goals and methodologies behind prototyping—and demonstrating how to prototype for both physical and digital products—this practical guide helps beginning and intermediate designers become more comfortable with creating and testing prototypes early and often in the process. Author Kathryn McElroy explains various prototyping methods, from fast and dirty to high fidelity and refined, and reveals ways to test your prototypes with users. You’ll gain valuable insights for improving your product, whether it’s a smartphone app or a new electronic gadget. Learn similarities and differences between prototyping for physical and digital products Know what fidelity level is needed for different prototypes Get best practices for prototyping in a variety of mediums, and choose which prototyping software or components to use Learn electronics prototyping basics and resources for getting started Write basic pseudocode and translate it into usable code for Arduino Conduct user tests to gain insights from prototypes

The recent rise of "smart" products has been made possible through tight co-design of hardware and software. The growing amount of software and hence processors in applications all around us allows for increased flexibility in the application functionality through its life cycle. Not so long ago a device felt outdated after you owned it for a couple of months. Today, a continuous stream of new software applications and updates make products feel truly "smart". The result is an almost magical user experience where the same product can do more today than it could do yesterday.

In this book we dive deep into a key methodology to enable concurrent hardware/software development by decoupling the dependency of the software development from hardware availability: virtual prototyping. The ability to start software development much earlier in the design cycle drives a true "shift-left" of the entire product development schedule and results in better products that are available earlier in the market.

Throughout the book, case studies illustrate how virtual prototypes are being deployed by major companies around the world. If you are interested in a quick feel for what virtual prototyping has to offer for practical deployment, we recommend picking a few case studies to read, before diving into the details of the methodology.

Of course, this book can only offer a small snapshot of virtual prototype use cases for faster software development. However, as most software bring-up, debug and test principles are similar across markets and applications, it is not hard to realize why virtual prototypes are being leveraged whenever software is an intrinsic part of the product functionality, after reading this book.

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.