Last week I read the two papers Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball :
Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration by Li et al and Comics,
Robotics, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses by
Fernaeus & Jacobsson. Both these papers were related to last week’s
theme design research. Before I read these papers I had my own view of how a prototype
works and how a prototype is created. Since I chose human computer interaction
(HCI) for as bachelor I have a hands-on experience of prototypes. I remember
spending a lot of time going from an idea state to prototype state by using
mockup programs such as Balsamiq and Mockup Builder. Even though the prototypes
made in this week’s papers were more elaborate than my mockups, they still
accomplish the important task of showing how a product or service might work
when it is completed.
I also read some of the other blogs to get a deeper understanding of
how other people interpreted this theme. It seems as if most people have a view
that is somewhat similar to mine. Most of us are studying media technology (and
some people have the same bachelor as I have – HCI) so it is natural that we
all have some experiences with design research, prototypes and mockups.
Unfortunately I was not able to attend any of this week’s lectures. I
had a clash with another course during Monday’s lecture and yesterday we spent
all day rehearsing our Future of Media presentation. From what I read in the
other blogs Ferneaus lecture seems to have been was very rewarding, so it is
too bad that I could not attend that lecture.
Hi! I agree with you that prototype should show how a product or service might work when it is completed. And it is good that you can understand and articulate this idea. But prototype is just a model, it is not a final decision yet. On different stages of design researches prototypes are evaluated and can be reconstructed. I should note that any prototype is just a limited representation of a design idea so it is often in the need for an explanation.
SvaraRadera