Seven: Prototyping

Prototyping is a critical part of the design process and should be initiated as early in the possible in the process. Once you understand a user’s motivations and expectations you should start to prototype solutions for them. Prototypes should be quick to make, flexible enough to be easily modified and robust enough to allow a user to have an experience that simulates the intended experience.

Paper prototypes can work well, especially early in the process. HTML prototyping is also helpful as the relationship between pages and the implications of selections can be seen. Video prototyping can be a powerful way to communicate the intent of an experience and force the designer to understand that experience in a setting that mimics reality.

Prototyping is valuable for two reasons. The first is the opportunity to get feedback from users and the second is that the process of creating a prototype reveals design issues and complexities.

REFERENCES
Read Feature Presentation by James Surowiecki in The New Yorker
How Prototyping Practices Affect Design Results [video] or read: Research Notebook: How Design Practices Affect Results by Steven Dow
App: POP Prototyping on Paper
Paper Prototyping Pads

ASSIGNMENT
For the next two weeks we are going to work on a project for Trickle Up.. The following creative brief is the basis for this assignment. When you return from Spring Break – on the 27th- Bill Abrams, President of Trickle Up and Arya Iranpour, Communications Director at Trickle Up, will join us to review your work.

Your assignment for the next 2 weeks is to create an interactive experience that communicates to an end user what it is like to live on a dollar a day.This assignment is inspired by the work of the humanitarian organization Trickle Up. Trickle Up empowers people living on less than $1.25 a day to take the first steps out of poverty, providing them with resources to build sustainable livelihoods for a better quality of life. The President of Trickle Up and their Communications Director will join us on April 3rd to review your concepts.
You can take any approach ranging from describing the experience using text, words or video to immersing the user in the experience through simulation or other techniques. Chose one platform (mobile or desktop or other device) and develop concept sketches that communicate the idea at a high level and then 3 or 4 wire frames that explain the user experience of your concept. The idea should be developed enough that you could conduct user testing based on your wire frames. Trickle Up has an existing website and you can assume your work would somehow integrate with that site, so you do not need to explain the work of Trickle up, but just focus on communicating the dollar a day experience.
Here is how TrickleUp currently displays the dollar-a-day experience.
Work in teams of two.