Week12 Revisit Definition of a Prototype

In week 1, I was thinking a prototype is an early working model, and most of them will throwaway eventually, but after I conducted all these interactive prototypes, I realize that prototype actually is a process or a product which acts as a thing to be replicated, learned or further developed. For each interactive prototype, we start inherit some features from last prototype, then make some adjustments or add some new features, after that we learn from user’s feedback to define issues, finally generate some solutions for each issues, the iteration will keep going until we stop improve the product. So the interactive prototype that I conducted is evolutionary prototype. And it’s very useful for game development, because for interface aspect, we want keep most code for future use rather than throwaway.  Overall, prototyping comes in many forms, but choose the prototype that most suitable for your concept should also be considered.

Furthermore, when I conduct each interactive prototype, the concept keeps change, include improving, deleting, and adding. We are not always follow the original design, but what kind of fact changes our mind, the answer is user’s feedback, their thoughts or suggestions are influence the concept and prototypes. Most of decision that I made were inspired by viewing user’s feedback, their direct motion and behavior responses are also considered as important feedback.  So I was thinking the most important prototyping process is evaluation, but after evaluate stage, analyses user requirements are also very important process. In conclusion, we can’t ignore any process in the prototyping process iteration, prototyping is a process, after all, not a single act.