Design Discussion Week 5: Prototyping
Before reading the post and watching the video, I had a vague idea of what went into prototyping due to personal experience. Back when I was a kid, I enjoyed building up stuff from materials and finding other ways to use products, with Legos being my preferred material for building. However, I would sometimes not quite understand the mechanisms of what I was building, hence would either keep trying to change up designs or give up trying.
After reading the post and watching the video, they confirmed most of the steps and ideas I vaguely had in my mind about prototyping but could never put into words. For example, usually the mechanism of a given product need to be figured out in a prototype first before moving to aesthetics. Something I did understand however is that when an individual is prototyping, typically they go through numbers of prototypes before finding something that works for their case. However, for me I typically prototype one or two designs as the nature of daily school projects usual force me to be quick about making a final design. If these weren’t project of such nature I would for sure take much more time in prototyping.
As with everything in the world, thing must evolve to adapt to the changing environment, to which prototyping is no different. There are several methods that are employed in prototyping in recent years, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. The first is rapid prototyping, which aims for quantity over quality as prototypes are quickly created to get a feel for ideas but tend to have low fidelity but also low cost. On the other hand, there is technical prototyping that aims for the most technical feasibility in exchange for more time and cost. Piloting is like a mix between the previous two prototyping methods, which seeks to make a large number of prototypes but are technically feasible per iteration. The last prototyping method is live prototyping, which a mix between piloting and rapid prototyping, in which it is used to explore what customers value and what the appeals to a live market without a big investment.
In my opinion, I can see the future of prototyping mainly consist of the live prototyping method, as prototypes are able to get feedback from the audience they seek to appeal to while minimizing time for feedback and costs. In addition, AI has also become a prominent tool people have used in recent years, to which I think it will also play a part in prototyping as it can provide valuable information for ideas and prototype fixes. In fact, modern technology in general has made almost everything easier for us, so a reliance on it for prototyping wouldn’t be a surprise.