jacobhylen

[jacobhylen]

Essay

Prototyping “efficiently”

How prototypes as manifestations is important for efficiently communicating internally within a design team

0.0. Abstract

Communication in a design team is crucial for efficient development of ideas and concepts. Without it the group effort quickly falls apart, and the project becomes several individual ones instead. Using prototypes as manifestations of your ideas is an efficient method for internal communication within a design team, and as such, it is a good medium to use when working in a group. Building prototypes to manifest your ideas into something physical will also allow the idea to speak back to you, since it is interacting with the world you are intending to place the idea in when you are developing it. The paper compares two projects that were assigned to us in the course, they were both projects where we were intended to prototype in order for us to work efficiently. But the groups were different. In the projects, the prototyping activities varied, and were more successful for internal communication in project 1. This is concluded because the activities in project 1 were useful in the sense that it allowed the group to have a very uniform idea of what the concept we were developing really was. Project 2 - that was less successful - had us using prototypes in a different way, and it led to us being conflicted and not working as efficiently. 

0.1. Introduction

This paper argues for how prototypes can be used as a manifestation of an idea to communicate internally within the design team. When a design team creates an idea it is crucial that the team shares the same idea, or they will quickly get stuck. Prototyping to manifest your idea ensures that the idea is communicated within the design team so that the team can work efficiently with improving the concept. The paper will use examples from personal experience, but also literature to ground claims and argue for why prototyping as manifestations is an efficient way to design. Early on in the prototyping course we were given a task, I will refer to this one as project 1. The next task that was given to us, I will refer to as Project 2. The example projects are used in the paper to explain how the difference in our use of prototypes affected the groups understanding of the concept, and the evolution of the concept as a whole.

1.0. Prototypes as communication

When one is working in a design team it is important to ensure that all of the team members can share their ideas and thoughts about flaws or how to move forwards. If the team is not able to communicate their ideas it quickly becomes several individual design processes, each member working on their own design. 

Using prototypes as the medium for this communication can prove to be efficient, while also helping yourself and your peers in developing the concept further. 

“Looking at our own or a colleague’s sketch, we can get a sense of eventual possibilities or limitations inherent in the idea.” (Lim, Stolterman & Tenenberg, 2008) Lim, Stolterman and Tenenberg suggest that when looking at sketches they embody your concept in a way that highlights both flaws and successful design choices in a way that makes them easier to perceive. This way, you can find the spaces where the concept has more to give.

1.1. Prototypes communicating back

Prototyping also allows for your ideas to communicate back to you. When you construct a tangible prototype your idea suddenly becomes something that you can observe differently than you can when it’s in your imagination. You may find what is missing from your prototype without doing further testing. In their paper on the anatomy of prototypes, Lim, Stolterman, and Tenenberg refer to a known Philosopher with the name Donald Schön, who proposes that externalising your ideas is not only useful, but necessary for a designer. You absolutely need to move your idea into the world for it to be able to develop, as this is the way to get the idea to interact with the world by itself, and therefore giving the opportunity of communicating back to the designer and the design team.

1.2. Project 1

Early on in the project there were prototypes created with the intention of communicating the ideas we had. It was a group assignment and all group members brainstormed. When an idea was created, it was quickly made into something tangible. We sketched, and we made wireframes using Adobe Xd. We ended up with wireframes of a digital queue system for the microwaves in the student pentry at one of the university buildings, among with sketches and other low fidelity manifestations of the idea.

This managed to give the group a uniform perception of the problem we were embracing, and in what way the idea was intended to solve said problem. Our low fidelity prototypes served as efficient communication of ideas, that could be developed further at a later stage. 

1.3. Project 2

Despite the success of our early prototypes in Project 1, those learning were not brought into project 2, as such those low fidelity early prototypes for internal communication were never created. The group focused on putting ideas down on paper with words instead of something tangible. The problem with this was that it is an inefficient way to communicate design ideas. Marion Buchenau and Jane Fulton Suri tells about a design project in a paper, where a design team was struggling to make their users during their testing process understand the concept fully with presentations or by explaining scenarios. They state that the breakthrough came when they built a physical hardware. Something tangible for the users to hold on to and to play with and explore for themselves. (Buchenau, Fulton Suri, 2000). This suggests that putting ideas into physical form, a manifestation, provides people with more than presentations do, and it is done in a more efficient manner. 

In project 2, initially the prototypes that were created were done so in a clumsy way, and therefore the idea wasn’t attached completely and the connection between the idea in the group members mind didn’t translate into the idea conveyed by the prototype, and as such the idea that was received when interpreting the prototype was misguided, it got lost in translation. 

The concept at hand consists of a set of two separate but co-dependent devices. A camera in the form of a bracelet, and a tablet that displays those pictures. The devices are meant to bring parent and child together, when there is physical distance between them. A child uses the bracelet daily, takes pictures of things that they find interesting and that they would want to talk about later, and then they sit down at the tablet with the parent and talk about the pictures, or they talk over a video call while having the pictures available to the side to discuss. 

What was miscommunicated was the purpose and the scenario where the concept is used. Members of our design team had different perceptions of this, and the problem that was to be solved, and inevitably this led to internal conflict. The group was divided into members who had the perception that the concept was for everyday use, disconnected from the internet all together and completely standalone, meaning that there was no voice call function in this vision, and the members who had the perception that the concept was meant to be able to be used after several days of separation, or even during separation with the video call. There was inevitably conflict between these two parties, and it had to be resolved before moving on. This took time and somewhat halted the progression of our prototyping activities, and the evolution of the concept.

2.0. Conclusion

When working in a design team, having a way to communicate your ideas within the team is crucial for working uniformly and iterating efficiently. Prototyping in low-fidelity is fast, and becomes a manifestation of your ideas that not only speaks back to you, but also to your co-designers. Therefore it is an important medium for internal communication. When not using prototyping as your medium for internal communication you are forced to substitute it in another way, that often becomes words. Words are inefficient and a simple misphrasing will cause misunderstandings that disrupt the design process, and halt the process. The prototypes you manifest your ideas in may be in any shape or material, as low or high fidelity as is appropriate, sketches can communicate ideas and scenarios, but it is shown in Buchenau and Fulton Suri’s paper that tangible physical prototypes have proven to be even more effective.

3.0. Sources

Lim, Stolterman & Tenenberg, 2008, The Anatomy of Prototypes: Prototypes as Filters, Prototypes as Manifestations of Design Ideas, retrieved from: https://mau.instructure.com/courses/5799/files/503789?module_item_id=136812

Buchenau, Fulton Suri, 2000, Experience prototyping, Retrieved from:

https://mau.instructure.com/courses/5799/files/503782?module_item_id=136808

[jacobhylen]

25/3 Entry #20

Oh, also, I’ve been writing in my essay mainly, more so than here, for the last few days. It is getting very close to completion now. I’m writing about how to prototype efficiently, more specifically I’m arguing for how prototypes as manifestiations is important for internal communication within a design team. It’s something I’ve experienced for myself, both when it’s succeeded and when it’s failed in this course, and I’m happy with what I’ve got. The words are all there I just need to polish it a bit more, possibly. But it’s being uploaded here very soon! 

[jacobhylen]

The project 2 PicCom bracelet

[jacobhylen]

25/3 Entry #19

Yesterday we prestented project 2. I think that it went well. I’m actually super proud of the presentation we created, a lot of effort went into it and apart from a few things that wer pointed out by our teachers it was very nice. I did a few things in Photoshop and Illustrator that ended up in the presentation and they fit well, etc. Wrapping up the project I think that we did well on the prototyping side, which after all is what was important for the project. We sketched where we were supposed to while we also made some more tangible prototypes that helped us further. The only thing I think that we should have done differently on the prototyping side is using the prototypes for communication within the group, but there’ll be more on that in my essay, as that is more or less what I’m writing about. Obviously our user testing was quite impaired by the self-quarantine everybody is doing right now, and while we did a good job working around it for the most part, it did limit our testing process quite a lot. The whole concept depends on the child being out and about doing things, but since the child we did get to take part was home for all but one of the days due to his school closing it’s doors we had limited material to work with. And we couldn’t really find any more families to work with - also because of the quarantine. But we took what little information we could gather and used it as much as we could, drawing conclusions while still keeping in mind not to depend too much on the information since it was an extremely small test group. The feedback we got from our teachers, what they told us could be improved were not things that had too much to do with the prototyping activities so therefore I think that our project was a success. The group worked well and we all took responibility. And once again, I’m proud of what we accomplished.

[jacobhylen]

20/3 Entry #18

I guess I forgot to write this down here but Hannes left a camera with his cousin and the experiment went well. We noted down that he seemed to really enjoy using the camera to take pictures and both him and his mother thought that the discussion at the end of the day was enjoyable. The mother learnt things about her son that she previously didn’t know, and they got to talking in a way that they usually don’t. We decided to leave the camera with him for a few more days but again, due to the virus he spent all that time at home not doing anything separate from his parents so there was not really anything for them to talk about. He didn’t take many pictures either. 

[jacobhylen]

20/3 Entry #17

Due to the Corona virus spreading, the university is now teaching digitally. I have to say that it’s a major disturbance to the course, of course I know that it’s for good reason but it’s disrupting a lot. It was already hard to do user testing because finding people was hard, now it’s nearly impossible. And without meeting them face to face guiding them on how to use the prototype or even having them understand the prototype gets harder as well. 

We’re working on project 2 with voice calls doing our best to create both tangible physical prototypes of the bracelet and some digital GUI grid interfaces of the tablet. We had crit 4 digitally yesterday and what we concluded was that we need to work on those digital GUI’s, and find answers to some questions. We’re nearing completion on the project and now we’re trying to manifest our ideas in prototypes so that we clearly can communicate those to our teachers in an efficient way. 

I think I know what I want to write my essay about as well. The second topic is aaabout prototyping efficiently, with the companion paper being “the anatomy of prototypes”. The paper suggests that using prototypes as a manifestation of your ideas is important to efficient work. I want to use my experiences from project 1 & 2 to argue for how manifesting your individual ideas and visions is important for communication internally within the design team. In project 1, when we had an idea we created a lo-fi prototype to showcase it, and communicate it to the other group members. It worked very well and we had a uniform vision of our concept. However this did not really occur in project 2, and it lead to some conflict in the group as some of us had some pretty fundamental disagreement of what the concept really was about. I feel like there is a lot to write about and that I can argue for my sake. 

[jacobhylen]

12/3 Entry #16

We’re kind of sitting ducks at this point in the project. We’ve got nothing to do until we’ve got the results from our experience prototype. Hopefully the experiment will take place tomorrow, that’s if our plan goes according to how it’s supposed to. It feels like we’re falling behind because we’re not really doing much these few days, and it’s making me quite anxious. But I know that we pretty much are on track, trying to reassure myself that it’s fine but oh well. Hopefully wwe’ll be handing out cameras to a family later today, so that the kids can take pictures tomorrow.

[jacobhylen]

12/3 Entry #15

This monday we had a lecture on prototyping beyond the norm with Clint.  It was one of the weirder lectures and I have to admit I was struggling to pay attention. With weird I mean that I found the subject quite abstract. We were shown a few videos and one of them included a woman standing in a circle, beside some objects. I’m pretty sure those objects were supposed to be robots, and the point of the video being that they didn’t exactly look like we as humans envision robots. They were not supposed to follow the norm. Though I still thought the video was confusing to say the least. I did take some notes from the lecture though and I will reflect on them for the rest of this entry

Clint talked about critical design during the lecture. In the sense that we are prototyping, not to answer questions, but rather to ask them. prototyping outside the norm provokes people and often sparks imagination that leads to questions being formed. These questions might never have surfaced unless the prototype was so “out there”. 

In this sense you are using your prototype to conduct research. And that is sort of what we are doing in our project 2 right now, albeit a lot less artsy. Though we have some questions that we want answered by doing our experience protoype, we haven’t considered implementing something intentionally provocative about it. Perhaps we can think of doing that in the future. 

Creating these provocative prototypes is almost like an artform. That sounds so pretentious but what I mean is that the end product, the prototype, is in many cases almost indescernible from art. If you’d consider the three “pillars” for commercial prototyping Clint talked about - Profitable, buildable, and desirable, it’s as if that last one is completely ignored from a commercial point of view. Why your prototype is or isn’t desirable isn’t interesting when you’re creating a provocative prototype. At least that’s what I got from it.  

Also: I might rewatch black mirror after this lecture, but try to look at the the artifacts with the learnings from this in mind. 

[jacobhylen]

10/3 Entry #14

We had the third Crit session today.

We plan to lend cameras to kids in a family and let them use those cameras to take pictures form their day. We then intend for them to discuss the pictures with their parent in the evening/afternoon. This is meant to be an experience prototype, and will hopefully grant us insights on how our concept is actually going to play out in a real family. We went and purchased an action camera today, and found another one at my home that is usable for this experiment too. They’re some cheap action cameras but they’ll do for the prototyping. However I feel like we’re stressing everything. We’ve talked to some families but we’ve got no actual confirmed plan of when the experiment is going to be conducted. We wanted to wait before setting something in stone until we’d done this crit session, to make sure that the teacher agreed that it was a good way to go. However since the next crit session is in less than a week, it’s tough to organise it, We feel like we need to have this experiment done before the weekend if we’re going to be able to analyse and use the information gathered from it. But just from asking prospective families today we’ve realised that we’re not really giving them enough notice beforehand, which is problematic in respect to their lives and weekly plan. It’s a shame because it turned out that the family that we were the most hopeful from turned out to be unavailable up until probably monday next week. Anyhow we’ve got some families on the line and hopefully we’ll get at least 2 or 3 to test our experience prototype with before the weekend.  

[jacobhylen]

Working in the workshop yesterday

[jacobhylen]

The board prototype/sketch

[jacobhylen]

06/3 Entry #13

Today we had the second crit session, and I think it went quite well. We presented our Concepts and Johannes seemed to think that they all had at least some potential. The two concepts that we together decided had the most potential were:

1. A device that can accept Voice messages uploaded by a parent that records things like intstructions, a good morning message and whatnot. The device could have small nodes that are detachable from the device, and then be left around the house for the kid to find. We found in a paper that someone had studied kids behaviour when finding post it notes left by parents, and they had concluded that kids enjoy finding these notes. We also found another paper that suggested that, while a kid who doesn’t have contact with their parent experiences alot more stress than someone who does, the difference between a kid who has physical contact with their parent and someone who only has vocal contact with them is pretty much dismissable. We decided to record some examples of voice messages for us to listen to to see if there is something to this idea and the messages were surprisingly wholesome. We found ourselves with a constant smile on our faces when listening to the messages. The problem with this one, however is that it’s one way interaction. 

2. A bracelet with a board. The bracelet has a camera built in to it, that the kid will use to take pictures throughout their day. When they come home in the afternoon they can sit down with their parent, put the bracelet on the board and upload the pictures taken with it. The kid will look at the pictures and use them to spark conversation. We found in paapers that kids lack the capability to consistently communicate in a proper way, that they exaggerate events and such, and often don’t tell the entire story. With the pictures the parent can both piece together pieces themselves or they can use the pictures to find questions to ask the kid to involve them both in conversation. When we talked about the concepts with Johannes, he said something about the “user journey” which I found to be interesting. The way I interpret it is that it’s the way the users interaction with the artefact evolves during their time of knowing it, and during the time, in this case, the kid grows up and becomes capable of holding a conversation with their parent without the bracelet and without the board. There is a clear start and end of the journey we expect the kids to have, which is not something we can say about the other concept quite as easily.  Another thing that is good about this concept is that it’s an all in one solution. It does not require an internet connection for anything, it’s simply battery powered. It also leaves the kid with a choice for themselves. They choose what to take pictures of, and they could also not put the bracelet on the board, the kid carries the pictures with themselves. This means that the kid’s integrity is not compromised because the parent wants more supervision. I am fairly certain that this concept is the one we are continuing working on. We also did some roleplaying for this concept. When priscilla was doing something elsewhere she took pictures, and we sent Michaela and Mahroo out for a walk where they took pictures as well. We made some interesting findings from this, that were implemented into the concept.

Going forward I think we thought we’ll try to do more research. We discussed buying some disposable cameras and giving them to kids we know, and let them take pictures during one day. We would later follow up and try to talk with the kids about the pictures, or have the parents do it, but we’d like to be there when they are going through the pictures. I think that this would be a very interesting experience. We’d get to see if the kids actually do remember to take pictures, or if they perhaps choose to take pictures of silly things. I would almost bet money on that my cousin is going to try to trick me into playing the circle game with her, for example. 

[jacobhylen]

28/2 Entry #12

We met and worked a bit on Project 2, we’ve made sketches and started thinking of questions we want answers to. The group is fine, sometimes we don’t share the same opinion on things but everyone shows up and everyone works hard, so it’s good. Earlier this week we spent some  time trying to find design opportunities for us to work with. and we came up with a few, some of them appear to have a lot of depth so that we can work with them. I’ll be honest and say that this project is confusing me, so far I’m not super sure what the end product is going to look like, I guess I had this feeling at the beginning of Methods II as well and that turned out well so I don¨t know if my worries are justified or not, but as of now I don’t feel super invested in the project which is a shame. 

[jacobhylen]

28/2 Entry #11

API-lab coming to a close. This project is coming to an end and we’re working on gettign the readme files in order before the hand in. THe group has worked really well, and we’ve been able to both work on what has been fun, and communicate and help each other during the project. For my part in the project I transformed a codepen project into a rainy background for a small game that I programmed into the example. I added a little cube that I’ve called Blob that you can move around and jump. I thought I would add some sort of an objective, and have Blob interacting with the environment but I did run out of time for that. I have an idea of how I would go about doing it though, so I do not think that it would be impossible. I kind of got into a rabbit hole with Blob however. While I know that it was perhaps not the best way to spend my time working on that project to keep developing and polishing the way everything looked and how he moved I couldn’t help myself from doing it, even if it doesn’t have the most obvious connection to interaction design. It’s something I do when I get into something that I find both challenging and fun. 

[jacobhylen]

21/2 Entry #10

API Lab

Our group is working with sketch.js. It’s a library that is used mainly for animating. We’ve come as far as to have chosen 2 examples each and we’ve played with them for a bit, experimenting what is possible, and findingt the limits of the library. It’s got good basics for drawing objects on the canvas, with lots of ways you can use objects to create animations and such, it’s got basic event listener setups, but honestly I’ve found it easier to just use the vanilla JS listeners. We’ve found that most of the examples that are available are working with particles in one way or another. This is interesting to us since it reveals that sketch’s strong suit truly is particles and animation, and thus we can work with that info as we’re moving into implementation prototypes. I feel like this has been an odd project, though. Not so much because of the actual project but it just feels like it’s been tossed in here into the course as an afterthought. We introduced it a couple of weeks back and then worked with it for a feww days then there was a huge hole where it was completely abscent in our schedule, and now we’re back at it and presenting next week. I don’t know it just feels odd. I understand that we’re meant to learn about using libraries and CDNs and implementation prototypes but this is probably not the best way to do it. 

But then again, I don’t know much about pedagogical discipline.

[jacobhylen]

21/2 Entry #9

I missed the CAD workshop today, was doing hospital stuff. Went well, I suppose. However I’ve talked to Johannes about me missing the workshop and we came to the conclucsion that it would not be super important for me to take part in it, since I have worked in Solidworks before, and passed the CSWA exam. Just writing this since there was supposed to be a post about that workshop for the second round of feedback. 

[jacobhylen]

21/2 Entry #8

This is an entry about the paper on Experience prototyping by Marion Buchenau, and jane Fulton Suri. “We can say an Experience Prototype is any kind of representation, in any medium, that is designed to understand, explore or communicate what it might be like to engage with the product, space or system we are designing.”

experience it yourself instead of observing someone elses experience. Understanding existing experiences Finding the essence of the existing user experience.

I found the patient example to be particularly interesting, giving a set of people pagers that would be called at random points to simulate a when a defibrillating shock wwould occur. WHen the pager went off the “test subjects” were to note down details about their environment, who they were with and where they were etc, to give the designers a real image of the context. I think this is especially interesting because it’s a method to gain real information. had the users been asked to explain and note down a complete schedule for their days instead, to give an idea of where it could happen, then something might have been left out, like a bathroom break or something else that might have been deemed arbitrary. Doing this experiment like explained in the paper ensures that nothing gets left behind like that. 

It reminds me of myself, actually. Recently I passed out and no one can explain why it happened, at all. I try not to overthink but worries that it will happen again creep into my mind. So - especially the first few days after - I was trying to avoid being completely on my own, just in case. And perhaps the patient experience experiment could give some of the test subjects similiar thoughts. 

I guess the essence of this particular experience is that it could happen without warning at any time, and that you might even be in a situation when you’d want to be assured that nothing is going to happen.  exploring design ideas Trying different experiences, fleshing out your ideas to see which are good and which have less potential. Low fidelity is very possibly a superb idea. 

The nokia Camera prototype is also interesting to me, it was a device that could take pictures and send them to friends who had a prototype as well. Forthe device you had to carry around a power pack and traansceiver unit. But the experience proved to be to compelling that the children seemed to forget about that inconvenience. To me, this is told in a way that suggests that if the prototype hadn’t been tested in this way it might have been discarded because of a belief that the inconvenience would be too much. However it proved not to be, which probably led the designers to keep working on that concept. By doing this experience prototype and exploring the idea they actually did research, and concluded a point that could be drawn upon in the future.  Communicating design concepts

Let the client understand the prototype completely by giving them to opportunity to experience it. Minimising the risk of miscommunication, and sharing the vision of what is intended. On Clint’s latest lecture, he said that when the designer is creating an artefact or alike, they have an idea of in what way they intend for it to be viewed, and looked at, logic, for the artefact in a sense. The user will also have an idea for the artefact, but it may alter slightly. Good design is when these two different ideas align and sort of merge into one. However communicating the design concepts might be a way to bridge this gap, for us as designers to clearly communicate in what ways the artefact is intended to be looked at, and the idea we had in mind when designing it. This is not too say that the users idea should be repressed, however. But when an experience prototype communicates the concept it can help set the groundwork for the idea that is to be constructed in the users head.