DECO2300 Week 4

In this weeks lecture we learnt about different types of prototypes. We touched base on many different forms a prototype could hold, but most importantly, we focused on horizontal and vertical prototypes.

Horizontal prototypes will generally consist of multiple features, but they will each contain little detail. A horizontal prototype usually tests the interactive metaphor behind a design, testing of raw functionality is usually delegated to the vertical prototype. Vertical prototypes generally focus on a few features within a design, but deal with in depth functionality. These few features will be highly detailed, but the entire design will still be conceptual.

These kinds of prototypes are one of many prototypes that can be used to test many different features of your design. The prototype that we used to complete a task in the lecture was a diagonal prototype. Diagonal prototypes are a mixture of horizontal and vertical prototypes, that adheres to a specific scenario.

We applied these methods to an in class task, where we had to determine the functional components of the inside of a car, the components related to driving behavior, how the driver interacts with them and ways we could test that.

We determined some functional components were the seat belt, door steering wheel and indicators. Interaction could be tested through many means including using actual cars. We were delegated with a task, where we needed to think of a low-fidelity prototype to test these components, similar to that of body-storms of earlier design subjects. For my low fidelity prototype I considered allowing each member of the design team to represent a component of the car, a member would act as a door whilst another would use their arm as a seat-belt. Whilst impractical, low fidelity prototypes are an easy way to immediately test usability of a design.