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Individual Essay

Digital prototyping - What are the qualities of digital prototyping, and how does this relate to interaction design?

What is a prototype?

Prototypes should not be the result of a design process, they should rather be the innovative process. Prototypes are the windows and lenses to view the people and processes of innovations (Valentine, 2013). Prototypes are made to explore various parts of a design idea to learn from it to make the design better. Therefore, a prototype should not be made as a finished product to show a fully developed concept. When making the prototypes it is not significant what kind of media or tools that are used, but it is rather how they are used by the designer to explore aspects of a design idea (Houde and Hill, 1997). Whatever prototype a designer ends up making, the importance is in how it is used to explore the user experiences and interactions. Looking into the different ways of approaching digital prototyping can be beneficial since it can give the designer an indication on which method to use for different aspects of the design.

In a design process of interactive artefacts, prototyping is a central activity since it can model various levels of the design. With prototypes designers have the ability to explore the looks, behaviours and functions of a design, and these can look different depending on the stages of the design process (Buchenau and Suri, 2000). Quick and dirty prototypes is a good first approach since various kinds of prototypes play their part in iterative systems that ends up with a well-understood product. Making a fully working prototype is too complex and takes too long time to be able to fit into an iterative process (Valentine, 2013).  In physical prototyping, it is quite easy to do quick and dirty prototypes. For example, if you wanted to explore the weight and size of an artefact it could be composed quickly with a brick. While in digital prototyping the focus is often on computer-embedded products where the user’s interactions are human-computer interactions where the prototypes might need to be a bit more complex than just a brick.

What does prototypes prototype?

Both physical and digital prototyping have their restrains. While physical prototypes are restricted to the available materials, digital prototypes have the ability to be made by faking many functions. Designers can make prototypes that looks and imitates how a finished prototype would to gain knowledge and explore the design space. Often prototypes are made to explore a specific aspect of a design idea. A designer can focus on demonstrating certain interactions without knowing or determining other aspects of a design, such as a product’s functionality or appearance. Designers can therefore purposefully screen out parts that they do not want to explore in that moment to extract knowledge about a specific aspect (Lim, Stolterman & Tenenberg, 2008). Designers can that way design and test different interactions and take that gained knowledge from the prototypes to make a better product. There are many different tools available to explore interactions through prototypes. Following I will give some examples of tools and how they were used to explore interactions.

With the technology we have today there is almost an endless number of ways designers can build digital prototypes. Tools range from electronic building blocks like Arduino to free user interface programs like Noodle and to web sockets where you can fake interactions. And Wizard of Oz simulations can be used together with other digital prototyping tools to simulate the interactions if the technology can’t do all the work. A design team had a project where the task was to develop a concept and/or a design requirement for a product that attaches to a bike with tourists who rent bikes in mind. The main concerns of the task were for tourist to find points of interest, follow routes, get back to locations like a hotel and to travel safely. One concept was developed with safety in mind. The concept was a sensor that would detect if a car were coming from behind in the dead angle so the cycling tourist wouldn’t be surprised by the cars and by that way avoid accidents. Without knowing how the finished product could look like the design team wanted to explore in what way the cyclist could be alerted and how the cyclist would experience this. Would the tourists actually feel safer in the traffic or would the sensor just be confusing? By using Arduino, an associated sensor and LED lights, the design team quickly programmed so that if an object were too close to the sensor the LED would start to flash with the flash increasing if the object came closer. This were mounted on a bike so user tests could be conducted (see figure 1).

Figure 1: Picture of the Arduino and the sensor mounted on the bike with the sensor to the left. The LED light was mounted on the handlebar.

The main aspect the group wanted to explore was how the users would react and behave with this kind of device on the bike. Therefore, the looks of the product were not important and not included in this prototype. This is an example of where the parts that were not interesting at that time in the development were screened out. The user tests showed all kinds of problems with the concept like the range limit for the sensor was too short, LED lights might be too weak to see in the sunlight and so on. The main question that was brought to light was also if the users would trust this kind of device, is it worth to continue to explore further into the concept? Imagine if the design team had started off by creating and testing the looks of the concept and then the functions and interactions and then after user testing decide to change the concept or not go further with it at all. Then they would have wasted precious time and resources on the looks of a concept they might not go further with because of the lack of function. The design team here saved that time by starting of by testing the user experiences.

Another example of a concept for the same project is a compass that is meant to point the tourist on the bike towards a specific point of interest instead of the compass pointing to north. The idea is that instead of a specific route for a point of interest that the tourist wants to go to, the compass points the tourist in the right direction so the tourist can decide its own way and explore the city. The design team wanted to explore how the users would interpret the compass while cycling. A digital prototype was made with websockets (see figure 2) where one screen is the compass that the user sees and one screen is the controls for the compass instead of using a real GPS. The screens were showed on two separated smartphones where one was mounted on a bike with a test user on it. The main question that the designers wanted to explore was how the users would interpret the compass, so the looks of the physical object that would show the compass or the colour, shape or design of the compass was not of importance at this stage. The focus was on how the users would behave with the concept where the looks wouldn’t affect the outcome of the tests.

Figure 2: Prototype made with websockets for the compass concept. To left: what the user sees. To right: what the designer sees and control the compass with.

Conclusion and discussion

Designers should consider having prototypes that is not too detailed as it can take away the focus from the concept or the part that the designer wants to test. By having too detailed prototypes, the users might give feedback on parts that is not of importance. Instead of getting feedback on the interaction or behaviour of the prototype the user might give feedback on the colour of the background since they might believe it’s pretty much a finished concept. With that said it is also important for the designer to have in mind that a prototype is not the same as a final product. By having the focus on the purpose of the prototype and what it prototypes, designers can get deeper knowledge. If designers have a clear purpose for each prototype they will gain in better design insights.

The main concern for interaction designers is to understand the interactions and how to design them. With digital prototypes designers can explore a broad area of interactions. By having all kinds of quick and easy tools available, designers can easily try things out and fail without it being too expensive. It is all about trying out and discover problems and explore possibilities. It is important to be able to try out concepts without having the fear to fail. Failing doesn’t necessary have to be bad in prototyping since designers still gains knowledge from it. Prototypes work as a helping hand for understanding the human interactions with artefacts. Digital prototypes provide tools that puts the users in situations where they can interact with products from the very beginning of a design process to the end.

References

Valentine, L. (Ed.). (2013). Prototype: Design and Craft in the 21st Century. A&C Black.

Houde, S., & Hill, C. (1997). What do Prototypes Prototype? In Handbook of Human Computer Interaction (2nd ed., pp. 367–381). Elsvier Science.

Buchenau, M., & Suri, J. F. (2000). Experience prototyping. Proceedings of the Conference on Designing Interactive Systems Processes, Practices, Methods, and Techniques - DIS '00. doi:10.1145/347642.347802

Lim, Y.-K., Stolterman, E., & Tenenberg, J. (2008). The Anatomy of Prototypes: Prototypes as Filters, Prototypes as Manifestations of Design Ideas. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), 15(2), 1–27

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2017-05-30

Now when we have finished our project work I feel that my knowledge about prototyping theory have come to use. We found ourselves thorough the project that we had to question ourselves why we were making the prototype and what we wanted to investigate with it. In the beginning it was easy that we just came up with different concepts and started to prototype the concept, not a certain aspect of the concept. We also ended up by maybe starting off from the wrong path when we prototyped our concepts from start and did not investigate the different materials and go from there. While on the other hand another group stated the opposite direction and claimed that it was a problem for them, so which way is the right way to go? I don’t know and this could be discussed over and over. I can only talk about the problems we ended up with by starting of where we did. 

If we hadn’t started to try out the materials we wouldn’t have ended up with the sensors that measures if something is close to it - our “blindspot detector”. Maybe if we had started to test out the materials from the beginning our concepts could have ended up in a different way. 

Overall I’m satisfied with the work we did and where we ended up. We always tried to prototype and come up with concepts with the users in mind. What I need for myself is to get better on the technical parts of prototyping. 

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2017-05-02

Now when we ourselves have used tools to collect different data I have gotten a different view on how to use the data. At first I felt that it was mostly use able from a commercial point of view, but from using it myself there is some relevant information to get for design. Using data, you can see how people navigate through websites and applications and how they behave. With the insights you get from the data you could design interactions. But I’m still a bit critical and think it’s a bit hard to get out of the commercial aspects. You want to do something that works best and that the most people like, so if you do that by going the with the safe path or if you choose to be innovative is kind of hard to figure out. I feel like it can be hard to be innovative by using data since people seem to prefer things that are familiar to them already. So could new and innovative design show negative results when it’s possibly the right way to go? Is it hard to get relevant insights on the design?

We could direct the insight we want by thinking about how we set up the task for the participants. If we try to get them out of their comfort zone initially we could get more useful insights. We should ask ourselves in the beginning when doing this kind of study what kind of different insights and conclusions we would get depending on what task they had or didn’t have. In my group for the exercise we had we used the page tradera.se to see how people navigate through when searching for products. We didn’t have a specific task for our participants, so the results we ended up with were more confirmations of assumptions we already had. So we need to ask ourselves how we could have design different task for this instead.

One confirmation we got was that the most important things should be at the top of the page, since the result showed that the people navigated mostly on the top of the page. But then we need to reflect on what parts actually is the most important. It is really hard to figure out what’s important. Something that’s important for me might not be as important for someone else.

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2017-04-24

Today we looked at how data and analytics can be used in prototyping. When using a functional prototype, it is easy to collect data and see how the users integrate with it. First, we got into A/B testing, where the point is that minor changes can make a significant difference. You test two different options of a single property and see which one is the best to use. (example below)

[Picture taken from Clint’s slides (2017-04-24)]

An example mentioned in the slides were the one when you are in a web shop and want to check out. One alternative you had to have an account to do the purchase while in the other alternative you could check out as a guest. Having that “guest” option increased the sales with 45%. So commercially it’s really beneficial.

Analytics where you can track events such as page views, clicks, cursor movements etc. is used in special test builds and/or in production. With that kind of data it’s easy to see for example which commands people do most or where people fail to find the functionality they are looking for.

The first thoughts that comes to my mind with these tools is that it feels like it’s mostly commercially pointed. That most of the things you want to figure out about a design is which one who makes most money. Of course we all want to earn money and if I’m designing a web-shop for a company then the point is to get the most sales out of it. It feels like it almost would kill innovation. But when I read the article Six myth about data driven design it kind of kills that statement. We can use the data to inform by proving, improving and discovering. Using data should be more about making improvements and discovering new possibilities.

But I still don’t feel like data is the way to go to make an amazing experience. It feels like it is hard to be innovative with data driven design since you would go after patterns and behaviours people already have. If you want to create new experiences it feels like you should want to move out of those patterns and think outside of the box. It feels almost like data driven design could pull us back, if we want to create exciting designs. As Douglas Bowman wrote about the way Google used data, that it was paralyzing the company and preventing them from making daring decisions, you can’t really blame them though. A company also got to do something that works commercially to survive in the business. 

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2017-04-18

Today we had the company Topp visiting and presenting what they do. Topp also has also developed the prototyping platform Noodl which we got an introduction to.

I think Topp introduced a lot of good insight and mindsets to have when designing. They mentioned that design is an approach to problem solving. We have a problem and we can solve by designing. And that you should know the real problem when you are trying to solve it. Sometimes the companies themselves don’t really know the problem, so you as a designer really need to get down and figure out what needs to be done.

They mentioned that sketching probably is the most valuable tool when designing. When they talked on sketching they didn’t just mean sketches on a paper but also talked about prototyping as sketching. And that you should be doing more than thinking during the design process. So, they go back and do a lot of prototypes and sketches throughout the design process.

Things they brought about prototyping is that you need to why you are prototyping, regarding accuracy. This seems familiar with previous insights we have got through this course and the physical prototyping course. You need to know what you are prototyping and what new knowledge and information you might want to get out of the prototype. But you need to be careful with not making the prototype too refined because it is often confused with accuracy by the ones doing user tests. On why you should prototype:

What could it be – discovery

What should it be – direction

How should it be – delivery

There are different prototypes you can make, the one you do to discover new possibilities with the product you’re making will probably not look as the one you’ll make when you want to deliver. The point I think with prototyping is to develop the product you are trying to make, with each prototype you make there will be something that’s developed since the last one.  As TOPP said, it’s not about the prototype itself, but prototping as part of the design process.

Noodl

To get more into Noodl, it is an experience design platform that lets you experiment, iterate, test and refine applications and service experience to uncover maximum values. With Noodl you can really build user interfaces without doing code, which makes it a lot faster. You can create high-fidelity interactive experiences, interactions and flows easily. You can easily create how you would like an app to look like, with all the different steps and looks you want. If you want a button to enlarge when you press it, you can make it with Noodl. You can probably do pretty much anything with Noodl when it comes to interactive experiences. With Noodl you can actually design the interactions, different from the other tools we have got to tried out where you only can add pre-determined interactions to your user interface. You can even bring Noodl out of your computer, tablet or smartphone and connect it to other devices by using an Arduino. A nice example of that, made by Topp, below.

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2017-04-11

Today we had an Arduino workshop. We did some different workshops:

We turned a LED lamp on and off from a smartphone through Bluetooth. https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/Genuino101CurieBLELED

We did one example where we could read how the Arduino was tilted and see a visualisation of it on the computer. https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/Genuino101CurieIMUOrientationVisualiser

We did one example with the potentiometer where we tried different ways to control it. For example, how far you can turn it before something stop/starts working.

We also did one example where we could control an LED depending on its position relative to x,y and z axis. If the lamp was below -1 on the x axis it would turn on and when it was above 1 it would turn on.

I didn’t get a new perspective of prototyping with Arduino from today’s workshop, the possibilities I see with it is pretty much the same. Just that we got innovative ideas of different products we could prototype. Like with the tilt function we made we could explore and prototype how a game controller could work.

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2017-04-10

Today we got introduced to speculative design and critical design.

Critical design

Affirmative design has strong ties to the marketplace, but with critical design you are supposed to move away from the problem solving and move on to the problem finding. As Anthony Dunne and Fiona Ruby said in the video we saw during the lecture, critical design is to make people think and to start asking question with the design rather than to create answers.

When doing critical design, I think it can be easy to cross over to the Design Fiction that Bleecker writes about in the paper we got to read for the lecture. I think when doing critical design, it can easy be seen as fictional since it probably goes beyond the norm and creates something kind of futuristic. In the prototype book (chapter 4), they write that designers contribute to the critical situation in the world through their association with business, commerce and industry, creating products, processes and performances. So maybe by doing critical design, we can move away from that statement and make something that will change the world for the better. Since critical design is meant to go for a parallel world rather than the future, a design for debate rather than design for production etc. it could broaden the possibilities and makes us think “outside the box”.

But is critical design really design? It seems to be more connected to art. But we could use aspects of critical design in an affirmative design process to makes us create better products. Maybe with critical design we could get out of our comfort zone and make innovative and exploratory designs that wouldn’t been made if you did it in the “normal” way.

Speculative design

Speculative design is concepts that is embodied as sketches or prototypes. Gaver and Martin writes that when you make something presented as fictional products, they can encourage people to imagine how it would be to live with them, and by that raising many reactions that might be encountered if the products actually existed. By doing this it encourages both a more integrative and mote emotional approach than by formal analyses. Speculative design has its focus more on science and technology and the implications of emerging technology, whereas critical design has its focus on the issues of the here and now.

I think speculative design also could be implemented with Design Fiction since what we would prototype with speculative design often is fictional. When we do design fiction we sketch out of a future world, without thinking about the technological possibilities. So maybe when sketching and prototyping things this way we push the boundaries of what people think is possible and maybe makes the technology drive forward faster. Since both design fiction and speculative design both is about drawing people into it and helping them relate to it, it could make people think outside the box of what is possible in the world.

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2017-04-05

Yesterday we got introduced to analog sensors and potentiometers for the Arduino. We used these inn small labs during the lecture to make fading LED’s and different sounds from the potentiometer. We also got to use a PWM (Pulse Width Modulator) to control the fading of the LED. 

The assignment we got this week was to create a keyboard that makes sounds. We could either do it by making it play sounds when you press characters on your computer keyboard over the serial port, or using buttons on the Arduino. I used the buttons so when they were pressed, different tones would be played. 

Through this lecture and assignment I got a clearer view of what possibilities Arduino can bring for my prototyping. For Internet of Things applications that both need custom hardware as well as software it is perfect to use an Arduino instead for prototyping. You can easily create interactive prototypes for different parts of an idea. We got to see a video (below) of a prototype made with Arduino where he made door handle with a lock that can be opened with a secret knock. 

This is a very good example of a pretty complex prototype you can make with the Arduino, but in less time and more cost effectively than doing all the hardware and software from scratch. Prototypes with Arduino becomes more towards a high-fidelity prototype I think, at least regarding how it operates. One example that you could test with this kind of prototype is maybe the feedback you get from pushing a button. The feedback could be sound or light. That is hard to prototype using other methods in physical prototyping. Maybe you don’t need to go all the way in with the high-fidelity. High-fidelity prototypes are supposedly prototypes that both look and operates closer to the finished product. But before you know exactly how you want your product to look like, you could try out the different functions and operators before by prototyping with the Arduino. The things we did in the lecture and in the assignment doesn’t look like a finished product would look like, but we still made prototypes that explores the function of dimming a lamp and playing at a keyboard. 

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2017-04-03

Today we got to try out websockets and IFTTT (If This Then That) using our own server on Glith. 

Websockets is a technology that provides a full-duplex, two-way communications channels through a TCP-socket. 

IFTTT is a web service that connects your different services to create new experiences.

The goal of the exercise we got to do was to use and misuse everyday commodity devices such as phones and tablets for the purpose of experience prototyping. I did a few different quick prototype with my android phone and iPad. We made one where you can write a song or artist on a webpage and that song will start to play on my android. 

One prototype I made is that when you take a new photo with the iPad, the wallpaper on the android phone changes to the taken photo. 

Another one I did was that when the weather forecast said that the weather was going to be cloudy, the wallpaper on the android changed to a photo with clouds. 

Clint also showed us an example he made where he could control which background color his webpage had by turning his phone around on the table like a knob. For instance, you could put the phone in a prototype that is supposed to be a turning knob that controls the color of a lamp. 

All these kinds of prototypes I made and also the ones I got to see highlights a big potential for using these services in future prototyping. You can make good looking and working prototypes. It is an easy way of making prototypes that could resemble different functions or objects that is hard and non-economical to make from scratch. By using these methods, physical prototypes could become more interactive and show the feeling and usage of the product better. I think these methods that we got to use today can be very useful for prototyping. Rather than just prototyping the look of a product, where you easily end up when doing physical prototyping, we can make them resemble the role and also maybe the implementation.

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2017-03-28

Today we got the first introduction to Arduino. We got to know the different parts of the Arduino, how to do with the wires and the basics of how to use the programming software. What we actually made with the Arduino was to make a led-light blink when pressing a button. We did this just to get a feeling how it works and what we could build with it. 

After this first lab I still think it is kind of hard to imagine what kind of prototypes I could build with Arduino. I understand that the possibilities are big but it is hard to imagine concrete prototypes. So I sat down at home to search for different Arduino projects. I found different projects where they made everything from small robots to a snacks vending machine. So I think the only boundaries I have working with Arduino is my imagination. When making prototypes with Arduino, I think we try to discover the implementation and role of a prototype more than the look and feel. It feels like the Arduino makes a more interactive and usable prototype than a normal prototype made in paper.

I also did the Knight Rider exercise (gif above). I don’t really think the hard part is doing the wiring (at least not yet). It is a bit trickier to figure out how to code to make it work. I feel comfortable with programming java script which I think will be good when learning how to control the Arduino. 

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2017-03-29

Today we got the introduction to digital prototyping. The theory of it is kind of like the one for physical prototyping, we just use different tools to actually make the prototypes.

We started of with trying out different programs for making interactive wireframes. Each group got one program to try out. Me and my group got InVision. InVision is an online tool for making static screens into interactive and high fidelity prototypes.

InVision is easy to use and it is possible to make very good looking and interactive prototypes. All the programs provided some kind of opportunity to make good looking wireframes that were more or less interactive. Some apps, like InVision, you had to make the actual wireframes in another program like photoshop.

One thing we discussed today was that in most of these programs you had to have kind of a clear mind of what you wanted to do. Lim et al (2008) is talking about tenuous prototypes and how to keep a balance between concrete designs and still keeping it unspecified. Since some of the apps were meant to make high fidelity prototypes, it’s not the best tool to use if you’re looking to keep the prototyping unspecified, abstract and open. It might get hard to discover problems and explore the design using these kinds of programs. When it looks so good as it does, maybe the users won’t give the best feedback. They might just look at the superficial aspects of the design rather then how it works.

I think that it is easy to do the Look & Feel when making interactive wireframe prototypes. But when the wireframes becomes interactive, I think it is easier to see the role of the design. You can see how it is meant to react and how the users is supposed to interact with it.

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END OF DIGITAL PROTOTYPING, START OF PHYSICAL PROTOTYPING

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2017-02-22

A conclusion

During these past weeks we’ve had the opportunity to try out different kinds of ways to do prototypes. Yesterday we briefly also got introduced to design foam, which I think seems very easy to work with while it at the same time it seems effective regarding time. We have tried prototyping with paper, clay, videos, laser cutting, 3D printing and with design foam. 

If I go back and look at the Houde and Hills model of what a prototype prototype, I think the easiest one is the look and feel. 

In all the different ways and tools we got to try for doing prototypes, I think it is hard with any tool to prototype the role and implementation. It is difficult to try to prototype the user experience, while that probably is the most important thing to investigate. If we are not making a prototype just to show some stakeholders how the product would look like, the user experience and implementation of the product is the most important knowledge we want to get from a prototype. There’s no use of a product that looks great, but is not use able or bringing some kind of experience for the user. There’s no place for a product that looks great but is useless. This all of course matters if we are making a product that is supposed to use and not just to look at, then of course the look and feel of a prototype is the most important aspect. But I’m assuming I will be prototyping things that will be used and not just looked at. 

So the big challenge for me is how to prototype the experience and implementation of a product rather than just the look and feel of it. 

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2017-02-16

This week we took on 3D printing. I have some previous experience with drawing in 3D in different programs like Solidworks, AutoCAD, Blender and Sculptris. So the drawing part of it I’m pretty familiar with, but I haven’t done a lot of 3D printing and I haven’t always had in mind that it could be a prototype that I was drawing.

Using 3D printing for prototyping has a lot of possibilities, I think. It is a  lot to prototype the look and sometimes the feel of the product. With 3D drawing at computers you don’t really have a lot of boundaries of what you can do. So that makes it good to use when prototyping, because you can do pretty much anything when it comes to the look of it (maybe not really big stuff though). And you don’t really get the functionality or the role of the product we are prototyping, but if you’re after a prototype that’s supposed to show how the product would look like, then I think 3D printing is a good, effective and easy way of doing it. 

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2017-02-15

Today we had our small “movie festival” where we looked through all the video prototypes the different groups had made. What I think all the movies succeeded with was to show what their car key worked. Some better than others of course but you got the grip of the basic functions the car keys had.

The critique we got was that our video did show what the car key could do, but the video didn’t really show how the users experience of it was. A critique that I fully understand and agrees with. As they mentioned, the video was positive from the start and gave the viewers a nice impression of the car key already in the first frame. 

What we maybe could have done was to have a bit more user experience in the film, and also make it feel more realistic (to take away the “robot walk” etc.). In the end I can see that our video is more oriented towards the car key and how it works rather than how the user actually experience it. 

I am still happy how our video ended up as, and we also got good critique too from our lecturer and fellow classmates

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2017-02-10

This week we were paired into groups to make a video prototype with the focus on car keys and how the unlock or start a car. 

I ended up in a group with Ali, Anton and Simon. We decided to do a video prototype with a car key that looks like a wand. The wand can help you find the way to your car by a light that turn s to green when you point the wand in the right direction. The wand also unlocks the car when you wave with it towards you car. 

First up we did a storyboard with all the different shots we initially wanted to have.

Then we proceeded to film all the scenes. We used my SLR camera to film and used a tripod to keep the camera steady. We also used a longboard to put the tripod on so we could get nice and smooth moving shots. 

Below is how the film ended up as:

We are happy with how it ended up like. We shot many scenes and came up with more scenes during the filming than the ones we did in our storyboard. 

I think it was fun to do video prototyping. But to be able to create a video prototype you also need to have some other kind of prototype to use in the video. So it’s kind of two prototypes in one. 

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2017-02-07

For this lecture we had today we were to read Buchenau & Suri's "Experience Prototyping" and the chapter "Crafting Interactions: The Purpose & Practice of Serious Play" by Shrage  in the book “Prototype” by Louise Valentin. 

The Purpose & Practice of Serious Play 

The chapter in the book writes that prototypes are the playground innovators. Playgrounds and prototypes are both media where cooperation, collaboration and imagination animate interpersonal interaction. The purpose to the prototype as a playground is that  we get the freedom to go beyond known norms and standards to innovate and create.

Experience Prototyping 

The paper “Experience Prototyping” treated the phenomenon experience prototyping, which is a kind of prototyping where the term “Experience Prototype” is meant to emphasize the experiential aspect of whatever representations are needed to successfully (re)live or convey an experience with a product, space or system. AS a definition we can say that experience prototyping is any kind of representation that is designed to understand, explore or communicate what it might be like to engage with the product, space or system we are designing.

Today’s lecture

We got an exercise where we would try out and reflect on experience prototyping for engaging stakeholders with physical materials. We were separated into three different groups, each with different cases. My group got a case with a flexible display. The flexible display were supposed to be used in scenarios such as reading and media consumption. The display should be as thick as four pieces of paper glued together and a inflexible driver module with the size 20 x 40 x 5 should also be attached somewhere on the display. 

The prototype wasn’t hard to make, we simply used four pieces of papers and laminated them and making the inflexible driver module in cardboard. We did some test with the prototype in different situations where it was meant to be used, such as in a crowded elevator. 

The prototype itself achieved its purpose. With it we started to explore and feel how a flexible display possibly could be used, and when we actually got it in our hands we started to think and feel what possibilities and obstructions it had. 

What we ended up spending a lot of time and thought on was what the idea actually achieved. Instead of thinking about different prototypes that could be made we ended up discussing good and bad ideas with the actual display. We were supposed to just discuss how we could prototype this device in our case. It is hard to just focus on that without thinking about good and bad things with the actual idea, but those insight are we supposed to discover and detect through the prototype.