What is Prototyping?

During this first lecture we went through the importance and what prototyping is. A big part of prototyping is fighting uncertainty building an understanding of the problem and iterating the solution as well as effective ways of prototyping.

Designers need to know who they are designing for, the material and, the concept as well as if there is a real need for what you are prototyping, an example could be google glasses where if you think about it without doing real research of the wants of a group of people then it might seem like a good idea but if you go into the real world there would be a lot of people against such device which led to a global ban of the product.

Prototyping is a way to engage with different materials and throughout the process you would probably have different inputs from stakeholders of value and if this materials and idea would be best or if they have more input based on their experiences.

The concept could be narrowed through field research meaning a more narrow and clear idea an example could be through observations and interviews you get a better perspective of what different people think about their needs and you can find out if there is a common ground between people you have interviewed and maybe you need to focus on one group of people’s needs instead of trying to please everyone.

It is important to try many times and fail as much as possible to have the best outcomes in prototyping as well as being open minded to different ideas and not just stick with one and make different variations of a single concept. It is best to start with low fidelity prototypes then High fidelity for the final product.

I can relate this process to music production where you may try things but then change the samples, chord progression, or drums as well as experimenting with sounds. After having a melody everything can become clearer on what vibe this song will have and if I would want to alter it sometimes just adding random drums with the melody can show you that you may need to change a thing or two about it.