Physical Design (Low-Fi Prototypes)

Nielsen's vertical prototypes

Focuses on one area of design, which is particularly novel and critical to design's success.

Nielsen's horizontal prototypes

Full breadth of functionality in design at the cost of detail

Advantages of paper prototypes

-Can be used early and often -Inexpensive and easy to create -Make designs visual -No special knowledge required- anyone on team can make them

What does physical design involve?

-How the design will look -What components will be required -How the UI will be laid out

Disadvantages of paper prototypes

-Not interactive -Cannot be used to calculate response timings -Do not deal with interface issues like colour, font size

What to consider before lo-fi prototyping

-What feedback to you need? -How much of the design should you prototype? -Breadth vs Depth of design?

What makes a "low-fidelity" prototype?

Being "low-fidelity", of course! -Easy and inexpensive to make -Flexible enough to be constantly changed and rearrange -Complete enough to yeild useful feedback about specific design questions

Wire-framing

Digital visual prototypes. Jim thinks they're too high fidelity to be a sketch, but not "real" either. However, they are used by many organisations.

Cognitive Walkthroughs

Evaluation team "walks through" a scenario with the prototype like you might do when looking at code. Focused on finding problems, not devising solutions. No one necessarily pretends to be the user.

Wizard of Oz

Having a person act as "the computer" and operate the prototype in response to user action (since low-fi means no actual functionality). The wizard can also modify the prototype on the fly (no need to write to memory because we have enough buffer pages).

Why do it?

In early stages, we want feedbackk on physical design issues at a high level, at a low cost.

Storyboards

Like a comic strip of the persona in a scenario. "Visioning" solution before prototyping it.

Whiteboard Prototypes

Popular for early physical design development among team members. Used more for brainstorming than role-playing walkthrough. Overall much like a paper prototype.