Name: ‫محمد رفيق محمد السيد ابراهيم‬
ID: 20011574
HCI: Task 5.1
An essay on "What do prototypes prototype?" by Houde Stephanie, and Charles Hill.
Prototyping is an essential concept in modern technology and is used to represent the features
and the feels of an evolving design, but since most of the modern designs and systems are complex, it is
becoming harder to make a genuine prototype that covers the important aspects of the product.
The authors of this paper are focused on changing how people think of prototypes. They want
the right language and the correct fundamental questions to be told and asked, in other words they
want to clarify What do prototypes prototype?
First Section: current difficulties in communicating about prototypes
The authors mention the difficulties designers face when communicating about prototypes. The
broad audience to which the designers discuss prototypes with makes it difficult to clearly identify the
purpose of the prototype, since this audience could be the intended users of the artifact being designed,
their own design teams, or the supporting organizations that they work within.
Designers find it extremely difficult to build a prototype that produces feed backs from the
users, respects the multidisciplinary design team, and is understandable by the supporting
organizations.
Another difficulty designers face is the fact that the term prototype could be interpreted in
different ways according to who you ask. A team responsible for building the prototype would usually be
composed of people having different perspectives on what a prototype is.
Second Section: prototype model and initial examples of prototypes from real projects
The authors model an artifact as three main aspects: role; look and feel; and implementation.
These are meant to be the three main dimensions that correspond to the most important aspects of a
design. A prototype is meant to cover some (or all) of these aspects. Following are some examples of
prototypes from real projects.
Example 1. Role prototype for 3D space-planning application [E1 Houde 1990]:
This prototype was built to clarify the role of a 3D space-planning application. It shows the users
how the application works and what it was made for by giving users the ability to select furniture from
an online catalog and try it out in an approximation of their own room. It also gives the user an initial
look of the look and feel aspect of the application.
Example 2. Look-and-feel prototype for 3D space-planning application [E2 Houde 1990]:
This prototype was built using Macromedia Director to clarify the look and feel of how using the
application will be by allowing the users to manipulate the furniture inside “handle boxes” when they
click on them. It was based on testing what the users would like to do with the 3D objects on the screen.
These tests showed that sliding, lifting, and rotating these objects were the most important
manipulations that the users were interested in.
Example 3. Implementation prototype for 3D space-planning application [E3 Chen 1990]:
This prototype was implemented to the designing team an idea of how complex the 3D
displayed objects should be. By building this prototype, programmers were able to identify the
complexity of rendering 3D objects on the screen, and how smooth the application would eventually be.
This prototype was not meant to give the designers an insight of the look and feel of the
application but rather an idea of the best options they had to implement their application; thus, it falls
under the implementation-focusing aspects.
Third Section: more examples
Role Prototypes
1. A storyboard for a portable notebook computer was a prototype that focused on the role of a
notebook that operates with both pen and fingers and shows the interaction between a student
and the notebook in a bizarre way. It also gave a rough approximation of the user interface
which makes it partially concerned with the look and feel aspect.
2. An interactive story to explore the functions and features of an operating system through
interacting with its user interface by play-acting. This prototype explored the role that the
operating system plays in the user’s life, and similar to the previous example it is a little bit
concerned with the look and feel aspect.
3. The knowledge navigator is a prototype that was made to show the audience how the future
notebook computer works. It was a video recording of a day in the life of a professor, and it
explored the role of the notebook in it.
4. An appearance model of a communicator was a prototype built to give the audience an insight
of how the look and the feels of the product would look like. It was concerned with the role
played by it by presenting carefully designed cues which imply a telephone-like role.
Look and Feel Prototypes
1. An animation of the look and feel of a fashion workspace was a prototype concerned with both
the role and the look and feels of the product through showing the audience an interface
including the objects that the product would have. The animation showed in details how most of
the fashion related procedures are done using a computer which would help fashion designers a
lot with their work.
2. Simulation prototypes were made to simulate the operation of a ball that speaks back to
children and has automated movement. This prototype is very similar to the wizard of Oz
example that was discussed during the lecture.
3. A pizza box was used as a prototype to simulate the feel of holding an architect computer. It
gave the designers an insight of how heavy the computer would be, and an approximation of its
dimensions.
Implementation Prototypes
1. A prototype written in C language was made to simulate the operation of a digital movie editor.
A carefully planned implementation prototype that was made to allow marking of important
aspects that the user would like to see implemented in such application.
2. A prototype of a fluid dynamics simulation system was written in C++ language to make it clear
for the designers if they can use object-oriented programming instead of the procedural
programs written in older languages. It was important to show that the new approach did not
incur excessive performance or memory overheads, thus it was an implementation-concerned
prototype.
Finally, we have the Sound Browser prototype, the Pile Metaphor prototype, and the Garment History
Browser prototype. All are called Integration Prototypes which were built to represent the complete
user experience of an artifact. They covered all three aspects that a prototype should cover: role; look
and feel; implementation, where all put into consideration with these prototypes.