The Principles of prototyping and the anatomy of prototypes
HOW IS PROTOTYPING IS UNDERSTOOD IN CURRENT RESEARCH IN HCI?
Excerpts selected and paraphrased from The Anatomy of Prototypes: Prototypes as Filters, Prototypes as Manifestations of Design Ideas
Many researchers and professionals have developed their own ways of prototyping for their purposes. Discussions on prototyping have mainly focused on the issue of the prototype’s fidelity, largely because fidelity concerns the matter of cost. Some have therefore emphasized the benefits of using lo-fi prototyping methods. These techniques include paper prototyping for all types of interactive products such as computer-based applications, mobile devices, and websites [Grady 2000; Rettig 1994; Snyder 2003]; physical interactive products [Avrahami & Hudson 2002]; physical interfaces [Greenberg and Boyle 2002; Lee, et al. 2004] and so on. Most lo-fi prototyping examples focus primarily on design exploration and communication and less on formal design evaluation.
Prototyping for externalizing and representing design ideas is another pervasive technique in designing interactive artifacts. Designers commonly use sketching as means to embody concepts [Buxton 2007]. Many researchers have explored developing tools for creating interactive prototypes that utilize a sketching technique. Sketch-based prototyping remains a popular topic for research, and a number of recent studies and tools have extended the sketch motif in prototyping—such as DEMAIS, a multimedia sketch-based editor [Bailey et al. 2001], and DART, a rapid prototyping environment for augmented reality environments [MacIntyre, et al. 2004].
Participatory design is another popular approach in HCI. This approach also utilizes various prototyping techniques. Many of the participatory approaches are used for understanding user needs and for exploring design ideas. In participatory design, the use of prototypes focuses on actively engaging users in creating and exploring design ideas.Because the users are not expert designers, the results from participatory design approaches usually need to be reinterpreted to understand users’ needs and values rather than directly adapting their design ideas into the final design.
Instead of focusing on the wide variety of purposes and processes in which prototypes are used, we need to define prototypes of any type in a more systematic and careful manner without conscious awareness of how prototypes may influence the way users interpret them during testing or how designers use them to identify problems, refine designs, and generate more ideas.
IIAA, or the Incredible Interactive Art Adventure was an intense 3-day art and design workshop constructed to expanded your creative boundaries, collaborate with fellow students, and a great environment to make new friends. The event takes place over one weekend where several design programs are invited to participate in creating interesting, fun, and engaging art using combined skills.
Due to prior engagements, I was only able to participate in the latter two days, though it didn’t feel like I missed out on much other than ideating with my group members and coming up with a theme and story with all the people participating in the workshop, which is definitely the important part, but I was able to participate in the actual construction process.
The theme of the workshop was an escape room. All of those participating were divided into groups consisted of members from different design programs. Each group was assigned to a room in the house. The goal of the combined escape rooms was to solve a kidnap mystery, everything except the kidnapper, the victim, and the motive is known, the rest is for the player to figure out through clues picked up throughout each room.
The Kitchen was assigned to us: two interaction design students including myself, one product design student, and one visual communications student. Since I started late, the group had started constructing a physical kitchenette made out of cardboard by the time I arrived. Although the group wasn’t clear of the outcome of the kitchenette, we kept going with it. Now that I’m thinking back, maybe it would have been a better idea to slow down and contemplate about what we really want this kitchenette to do, what clues it’s going to give out, and so on, as this wasn’t really thought about prior to the construction. As we went on, we decided that the task the players should do upon entry is to try to find out how stop the baby from crying. The baby, named Senior, is a character in the story, child of Jack (17), while the identity of the mother was unknown. The family consists of Bernard (70), his daughter Susan (33) and her deceased husband Paul (36) their sons Greg (9) and Jack (17), Jack’s bastard son Senior (0), and the family nurse that looks after Bernard, Erica (27). The players pose as detectives hired to solve the mystery.
The victim of the kidnapping was Greg, because he found out who Senior’s mother was- Erica, who is also the criminal. Erica kidnaps Greg in order to gain approval from Susan and Bernard to be with Jack, since they did not approve of this relationship.
Moore family tree
As we proceeded on, we had to think of what to incorporate into our escape room that could contribute to the overall development to the story. Here’s where the first challenge took place for us. We hadn’t previously planned the clues we would place in the room prior to starting the physical construction of the kitchen. This lead to a lot of hectic last minute planning as to how the room would play out when the players entered. Secondly, this was an interactive design workshop, yet we did not manage to incorporate anything technical into our room. Initially, we brainstormed the idea of having a clock hanging on the wall counting down the time the players have left to stay in our room, the clock also ticks faster and faster as time goes on. We planned to carry this out with a motor using an Arduino. However, this plan didn’t work out as none of the team members had much experience working with Arduino just yet and didn’t know how to code the program. We had no plan for anything else technical in the room, so we simply focused on completing the kitchen. Our final plan after constructing the kitchen, was to wizard-of-oz the heck out of our escape room. We cut holes behind the kitchen so we can physically move around objects in the kitchen, interact with players by switching in an out objects in our room through the black mast that hangs behind the kitchen, play audio clues in Senior’s voice to help guide the players and also present the final clue at the very end when they have completed all the tasks.
The task in which the players have to be intuitive enough to carry out are: – Walk into the room, baby starts crying, they must realize that the task is to stop the baby from crying. (When they take too long, the audio clue “feed me” is played) – Notice the pieces of paper attached on the fridge door that serves as clues, on the “How to Senior” page it states that one of the tasks that needs to be performed in order to stop Senior from crying is to feed him. The players have to figure this out. -On the same piece of paper on the post it note that teaches you how to handle a hungry Senior, it states to make him an “Apple Oatmeal Porridge”, the piece of paper right underneath “How to Senior” is a recipe to the Porridge, the players must notice this. – The players must follow the instructions written on the recipe that guides them to searching ingredients scattered throughout different shelves in the kitchen. They must place all of these ingredients in the “ingredient box” before proceeding to the next step. – They must realize that they need to perform a specific task before unlocking the pan which they need to use to “cook” the food, the task is to reorder the dishes in the dishwasher, this is hinted through another audio played in senior’s voice saying “mommy always puts the dishes in the dishwasher”. – Once the dishwasher opens up with the newly revealed pan inside, the players are asked by the recipe on the door to place all the ingredients without pouring any out in the pan and wait for them to “cook magically”, in the meantime, peanuts will be scattered on the floor and Senior says “mommy always keeps the kitchen clean”, this is also hinted on the recipe that “Senior will refuse to eat until the kitchen is clean”, which means the players must pick all the peanuts up and place it in its container before proceeding. – Once everything’s cooked and ready, players will feed the finished product to Senior, at this point, Senior would have stopped crying. Senior then says “You made it!” and reveals the clue “Mommy was just here, have you seen her?”
The entire escape room was carried out through the Wizard of Oz technique. The Wizard of Oz technique of prototyping (WOZ prototyping) “requires developers to create a rudimentary model of the completed product, which is called a prototype.” (In this scenario, our kitchen) “The prototype may be quite simple, using every-day objects to represent parts of the finished product or it may be a working model, capable of performing some – but not all – of the tasks the completed product will perform. Once the prototype has been created, developers use role playing to test how end users will interact with the product.”
We utilized strings tied to the handle of the dishwasher to simulate it “popping open” or “closing” by releasing and pulling the strings, when the dishwasher “popped open”, we used a hole behind the dishwasher to toss plates outwards. The same technique was used to scatter the peanuts and to switch the pan with the ingredients out with a pan containing the finished product of oatmeal. The audio track playing in the background is also part of the play. One of the flaws that we’ve gathered based on reviews from the players include having a hard time figuring out what to do in the room until they finally noticed the instructions on the door, another one is not understanding what the clue was at all. The major clue given in our room was Senior’s statement “mommy was just here have you seen her?” and it insinuates that Senior’s mother was just present and is often around the house, so the player gets one step closer to identifying Senior’s mother.
Overall, even though the Wizard of Ozzing experience was extremely exhausting yet entertaining, and received many good reviews including Topp selecting us as their favorite room, it felt like we could have incorporated at least something slightly technical since it was mainly an interaction design workshop. This was difficult for us mainly due to the lack of planning before starting the construction of the room, and also due to lack of experience by our group members. This was an issue addressed to the IIAA hosts in the feedback form they provided, that perhaps more variety in terms of member experience could be considered more when initially forming the groups. We were lucky enough to have members from Interaction Design, Product Design, and Visual Communications but the ones familiar with Arduino were both first year students.
To conclude, this workshop was indeed great opportunity to practice our creative skills in a fun and not-so academic setting, which was what the hosts had promised. Through this experience, we were able to exchange knowledge and ideas with students from the other design programs and get a hands-on feel for what the different disciplines are all about. These two intensive days of building and creating art that interacts with an audience lead us to exploring all kinds of tools and materials, both physical and digital. Seeing the final product come to life was extremely rewarding and the whole experience meaningful, hence why I found it necessary to dedicate a blogpost to the workshop.
Journal with me! 