The first paper I read was Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of
actDresses written by Fernaeus and Jacobsson. In this paper the authors
evaluate how the fields of comics (as in comic strips) and fashion could be used in combination with programming and
robotics. Some of the current consumer robotic products, such as the Roomba or
the Pleo, do not have GUIs, monitors or any other usability friendly interface
to interact with. Therefore the authors propose that users could interact with
these devices by adding or changing the robots' clothes or cloth covers. In the case of the Pleo, a robotic household pet, a bracelet and
a pajama with RFID-tags are used to intuitively change the mode of the pet from
“watchdog” to “sleeping”.
I don’t know if I learned anything in particular when
I read this paper, but I think it is an interesting field of research. The
connection between fashion/comics and programming/robotics is very original and
not something I have seen before. I also liked how the authors used pictures to
clearly show how their design prototypes worked.
What
role will prototypes play in research?
I believe that prototypes already do play an important
part in research, and I think that they might become even more important in the
future. As technology and media technology are growing more complex, it is
becoming increasingly difficult for users to “imagine” what a product or a
service might look like. When reading the article Turn Your Mobile into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using
Vibration it is very obvious that the prototype that the authors
constructed played a major part in their research. Without the prototype it
would have been almost impossible to conduct any usability tests. The late
Steve Jobs once said that “people don't know what they want until you show it
to them”, and I think this is very true in technology research and business.
How are people supposed to know if they want or need a product if they have
never seen the product before? The funny thing is that this view is not at all
new, since Henry Ford back in the early 1900’s said that “If I had asked people
what they wanted, they would have said faster horses”.
What
are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?
The characteristics of a prototype could vary greatly
between different areas of research or business, but something they all have in
common is that there are used to test and evaluate a new design. There are
several reasons why a new design needs to be tested. One reason could be
usability aspects, as seen in the paper by Li et al. Another could be
durability or feasibility tests, as seen in cars or larger mechanical products.
One limitation of prototypes is that there are usually only produced in a small
scale, and therefore the price per unit is very high. Because of this it is
hard to determine the “value for money”-aspect and what the final price might
be when the product reaches mass production. Another issue with prototypes is
that they do not represent the final product, and therefore it could be treacherous
to base the perceptions of a product on just a prototype. Even though a
prototype is supposed to be quite “usable”, it could still be much worse than
the final product.
References
Fernaeus, Y. & Jacobsson, M. (2009). Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction. New York: ACM.
Réhman, S., Sun, J., Liu, L., & Li, H. (2008). Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration. IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, 10(6), 1022-1033.
Hey. I think it's interesting how you wrote that since technology is growing increasingly complex, it's also growing as increasingly difficult for users to imagine a product or service. It's a good point because as you mentioned, "consumers don't know what they want until they see it" which is true. It's really funny too how you cited Henry Ford about faster horses! It's a clever thing to say because sometimes I think people get stuck only thinking about what other people need or want, instead of focusing on the idea. Prototypes are great to explore the eventual behaviors of people with the thought product/service and how well it would work, but sometimes I think there could be a risk that the prototypes will be altered and adjusted too much based on the opinions of the test persons. I think there is a need to also have that in mind and take into consideration that you want to create something new and so what people say about a prototype, which is an unfinished product, may turn to the opposite when they see the final product.
SvaraRadera