denise

What are the 4 types of prototypes, what are they used for and give examples.

-Role
-Look and feel
-Implementation
-Integration

A prototype is the fist approach or representation of an idea, it can be rough but it should explain the main point. There are four kinds of prototypes, each one works fine in its own way, we have Role, implementation, look and feel and the last one is actually the mix of them three.

The role prototype is the one that assumes the idea, and represents it better than the rest of them for example a good role example is the one of the 3d program explained in the lecture, this program assumed the job of interacting and creating 3d space but it lacked of look and feel and implementation, because when the user tried to do it they had to come with new ideas for it to be more friendly. A look and feel prototype is a prototype that works more and defines what the final project is going to look like, it has more fidelity to the last approach, for example the toy that they created a ball that talked back to kids, they used a walkie talkie, a ball and many things that led their prototype to feel like the final product will feel like.

The implementation prototype works more on how useful this prototype is, to see how its working and if it works, from the audio there is a great example about the design team that went to the hospital and talked with the medics that wanted to create a new machine, not much time after the doctors explained what they wanted an idea came to the young designers mind, he implemented tools that he had at hand at that precise moment just to show the main idea of the functionality and the implementation of what the machine was going to do. It wasn’t very pretty but it worked and it transmitted the point, so well that the doctors understood it and liked it. The last prototype , integration is the more balanced one and it’s a complete prototype that uses all of the above.