Critical Experience/Function Prototype(s)

Due: Friday, November 16th (Critical Experience Prototype(s)) / Friday, November 30th (Critical Function Prototype(s))

Welcome to the first prototype assignments of your corporate project! Now that you are connected with your global teammates, ready to get creative?

The Goal

The goal of the Critical Experience/Function Prototype(s) is to take your first ideas and start designing, start creating, and start testing so that you can learn faster and test your assumptions. The goal is NOT to create a beautiful or refined prototype that you can show off. Learnings are much more important than refinement at this stage.

These prototypes are all about the "critical." Ask yourself, what is the most important elements of your design/idea? If we can't get this to work as we want (function) or if we can't get people to enjoy/understand/use this as we want (experience), we don't have a solution. Be sure to start with a question(s) and be explicit with it (them).

Critical Experience Prototype(s) (CEP)

  • The Critical Experience Prototype involves putting together an experience that helps you to answer an important question about your users and how they might respond to some aspect or element of a design.
  • To do this, you need to make some initial guesses about who your users might be and what might work for them.
  • Ideally, test your CEP on people who are representative of your users.

Critical Function Prototype(s) (CFP)

As with the CEP, you should be developing an idea that you can test with your user. Unlike the CEP, you should start moving away from paper, smoke and mirrors, and start building functional hardware and/or software which addresses a critical issue with your design. Again, the refinement or the system level completeness is not being tested here but the critical component of what you're proposing.

Expectations

  • Build (a) critical experience(s) and function prototype(s) and test it with people you believe are your target users.
  • Be able to explain what you are trying to test and why that is critical.
  • Keep good records of what you did, why you did it, and what you learned from doing it.
    • This will help you with your presentations and documentation in the future.

Deliverables

Like with previous deliverables, assignments will be due during your SGMs.

  • Share your critical experience(s) and function prototype(s). Be sure to show, not tell.
  • Prepare a 1-2 page handout (or several slides if you prefer) for the teaching team and your global team (be sure to send it to them too). Pictures are highly recommended.
    • Also, leave the .pdf in the assignment dropbox.
  • On screen visual aid (slides, pictures, videos) are more than welcome, but you do not need to prepare a slick presentation at this point, we rather you spend time on your prototype and testing.

Advice

  • Don't get so caught up in the question that you lose track of your end goal and turn the prototype into a science experiment. While we want to learn, we also want to make sure we have the end sight in view. Be sure that you know where you're going if you succeed.
  • A representation of an idea without a proper feedback mechanism is merely a mockup, not a prototype. Don't create something where the testing is simply "do you like it?"
  • Don't try to prototype the entire system or the product. Remember, you're focusing on the critical element, without which your idea would not be feasible.
  • If you have multiple ideas you want to try out, create multiple prototypes. Comparative testing of multiple prototypes can be very powerful.
  • Remember that testing your prototypes is also a way to learn more about your users and your project. Needfinding never ends!