Prototype Thoughts

“A prototype is one manifestation of a design that allows stakeholders to interact with it an explore its suitability; it is limited in that a prototype will usually emphasize one set of product characteristics and de-emphasize others. When you hear the term prototype, you may imagine something like a scale model of a building or a bridge, or maybe a piece of software that crashes every few minutes. But a prototype can also be a paper-based outline of a screen or set of screens, an electronic picture, a video simulation of a task, or a three-dimensional paper and cardboard mockup of a whole workstation” (Rogers, Sharp, & Preece, 2012).

Reflections

A new product can be the most innovative one of its kind, but if the user finds it to be frustrating to use, they will not use it. Allowing potential users to experience the use of product as it is developed allows engineers and designers to develop products that will be both innovative and user friendly. Prototypes are used to help accomplish this. A single product can have multiple prototypes as development progresses. The last prototype may look drastically different from the first, or it may simply have minor changes that someone who hadn’t used the prototypes extensively may not pick up on quickly. No matter the changes made, they are done with the end user experience in mind.

Thoughts

Emphasizing the end user experience when creating prototypes and making changes to them is vital to product development. Users need to have good emotional interactions with products to continue to use them. I know that before we upgraded our medication cabinet server from a stationary one in the pharmacy to a cloud based one, I hated having to log on to the server to run reports. I would sometimes have to wait on other people to get done running their reports and log off before I could log on and run mine. Now we all are able to access the server from our own desktops and run any reports needed at any given time and it’s no longer an annoying task.

References

Rogers, Y., Sharp, H., & Preece, J. (2012). Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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