On Nov 12, 2007, at 1:33 PM, Peter Boersma wrote: > Your position seemed to be, *until this post*, that only high > fidelity models of how a product would behave could be called > prototypes. That is still true from my point of view -- hi-fi models are really the only true prototype. The part I keep leaving out that people make logical leaps that I do not intend is that everything I tend to do these days within a project design is towards building a prototype. Everything up to the point of a usable prototype is basically design process and needs to be as iterative as possible.
Time and budget constraints hinder this goal, but it is still the goal nonetheless. And when time and budget get in the way, you make do with however far you can get. And fwiw, I also now tell clients that the prototype can be thrown away at any stage when it's proven its the wrong design. And we have to restart the design at some point in the process where it wasn't wrong. I don't get myself married to anything. And my *preferred* method of working given the time and budget is to build the prototype of the product as fully as possible, try it out, then throw away whatever doesn't work and redo that part. We also do smaller chunks of prototyping when the feature or function is modular enough to be a contained element. But we also do that with pixel precision as well, as interactive as we can make it to get it out before it gets folded into the larger prototype. > Lower fidelity prototypes, like paper prototypes, got hammered down > with statements such as... > Prototypes that are not pixel-perfect get a similar treatment with > replies like... > > IMHO that is the reason why people objected to your point of view. I guess that makes sense. But again, I've mentioned paper as a *design* tool in this whole thread, and I think people keep skipping over that part of my argument. Probably because the moment I say paper is not a prototyping tool, they disagree so vehemently with me that they can't read anything else I say about the subject where I also qualify my point of view. I take the aggressive point of view that paper is not prototyping and that prototypes for software and digital products need to be pixel perfect and include interaction as much as possible because I think to not take that position gives too many people in our field an excuse to not dive into building the product for real. Versus describing the product in whatever design deliverable they prefer, which is not a prototype. There is such a massive difference between any deliverable that "describes" the design, no matter how clever or thorough, and a functioning prototype that I cannot imagine any designer of a digital product or software application -- again, given the time and budget -- would opt to not build one. And yes... I'm back to work now and will probably lurk for a while until the next lull. 8^) -- Andrei Herasimchuk Principal, Involution Studios innovating the digital world e. [EMAIL PROTECTED] c. +1 408 306 6422 ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
