I would say that showing the users the prototype as part of the interview (at the end sounds reasonable) would be a good thing. If development is already underway, by the time you're done with your research and design process they are likely to be pretty far down the road and resistant to change. An easily imagined rebuttal from the developers would be "Sure, that's the stuff you've come up with based on your interviews, but it would probably be different if they saw what we had."
So show it to the interview subjects, get their feedback, and share it quickly so that any fundamental changes in direction can be made before they become too costly, and the rest can be fine-tuning from there. Doug Brown [email protected] On Jan 8, 2010, at 1:50 PM, Jonathan Abbett wrote: > Say you're brought in to do user research and feature definition for a > software project that's already underway (i.e. development began on > day one). > > You have your tried-and-true process where you interview users long > before you write scenarios, nevermind write code, but the client > suggests that you take the latest prototype along to show interview > subjects. > > Is there a way to productively generate feedback on a prototype, say > at the end of an interview? > > Or, is there a way to productively convince a client to keep the > prototype away from potential users until after the research & design > process is complete? ________________________________________________________________ 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
