Prototyping: Lo-fi, Hi-fi A summary of prototyping theory and history, with a focus on lo-fi prototyping and how it relates to the Coffee-room problem

What, why? “ The creation of a model and the simulation of all aspects of a product. [...] ” - Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing ● Avoid unnecessary work ● Increase productivity ● Increase efficiency ● Empower workers

Methods Hi-fi Lo-fi

History ● The Scandinavian Challenge (1987) – UTOPIA project ● Marxist principles ● Efficiency rejected as goal ● Democratic empowerment – Contextual Design ● Capitalist principles ● Functional empowerment

Prototyping for Tiny Fingers ● Designs improve over successive iterations of a prototype. ● We want more prototypes ∴ We need to shorten the time it takes to build prototypes Lo-Fi Prototyping

How? ➢ Get the bits (paper, pens, scissors, etc.) ➢ Arrange a testing time ➢ Build your model ➢ Find some testers ➢ Prepare and practice your tests ➢ Conduct test ➢ Evaluate results ➢... ➢ Profit!

The good ✔ Much faster to develop prototypes ✔ Much easier to change designs ✔ Encourages focus on real design issues (and not the details) ✔ Can get more detailed feedback

The not so good ✗ Possibly increased preparation and interaction required during testing ✗ Appearance can put people off using the prototype or taking it seriously ✗ Hard to handle situations where networking is involved

CoolBeans ● More effective testing sessions ● Ability to try more ideas ● Increased tester participation

Summary ● More prototypes enable a better design ● Lo-fi prototyping is a rapid process ● Appearance can facilitate better testing feedback ● Strict Lo-fi prototyping may not be user-centric enough ● Not as effective in an ubiquitous computing environment?

References ● Prototyping for Tiny Fingers, Marc Rettig, Communications of the ACM, April 1994 ● A Scandinavian challenge, a US response: methodological assumptions in Scandinavian and US prototyping approaches, Clay Spinuzzi, Proceedings of the 20 th annual international conference on Computer documentation (p ), 2002 ● Paper or interactive?: a study of prototyping techniques for ubiquitous computing environments, Linchaun Liu, Peter Khooshabeh, CHI '03 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems ● Contextual Design, H. Beyer, K. Holtzblatt, Interactions 6.1, 1999