How can a prototype be used

Find jobs. Company reviews. Find salaries. Upload your resume. Sign in. Career Development. What is prototyping? Types of prototyping. Sketches and diagrams. Physical model. Role-play through virtual or augmented reality.

Working Model. Video Prototype. How do you choose a prototype? Tips for creating and using prototypes. Consider the conditions. When you create and test a prototype, you need to consider how the item might work outside of testing conditions in a lab or controlled environment.

You may also need to test prototypes in ways that will account for different types of use and wear. Change things if necessary. If you create a prototype that reveals a design flaw, move back to an earlier model or design. Make any needed changes and start again with a new prototype. Think about safety. Prototypes are a way of checking to ensure the safety of a design. For digital works, this can mean protecting against cybercriminals and hackers.

Physical models need to test functionality for users to ensure safety as well. Involve the team. Since users know the problem domain better than anyone on the development team, increased interaction can result in an end product with more significant tangible and intangible quality.

The final product is more likely to satisfy the user's desire for a look, feel, and performance. Preliminary analysis: The focus on a limited prototype can distract developers from properly analyzing the complete project. It can lead to overlooking better solutions, preparing incomplete specifications, or converting little prototypes into poorly engineered final projects that are hard to maintain. Further, since a prototype is limited in functionality, it may not scale well if the prototype is used as the basis of a final deliverable, which may not be noticed if developers are too focused on building a prototype as a model.

User confusion of prototype and finished system: Users can begin to think that a prototype intended to be thrown away is a final system that merely needs to be finished or polished.

It can lead them to expect the prototype to accurately model the performance of the finished system when this is not the developers' intent.

Users can also become attached to functions included in a prototype for consideration and then removed from the specification for a final system. If users can require all proposed features to be included in the finished design, this can lead to conflict.

Developer misunderstanding of user objectives: Developers may assume that users share their goals e. For example, user representatives attending enterprise software events such as PeopleSoft could see "transaction auditing" demos where changes are recorded and displayed in a different grid view.

Unfortunately, they have not been told that this feature requires additional coding and often requires more hardware to support other database access. Users might believe they can demand auditing in every field, whereas developers might think this is feature creep because they have made assumptions about the extent of user requirements.

Suppose the developer had committed delivery before the user requirements were reviewed. In that case, developers are between a rock and a hard place, mainly if user management derives some advantage from their failure to implement requirements. Developer attachment to prototype: Developers can also become attached to prototypes they have spent a great deal of effort producing; this can lead to problems, such as attempting to convert a limited prototype into a final system when it does not have an appropriate underlying architecture.

This may suggest that throwaway prototyping, rather than evolutionary prototyping, should be used. Excessive development time of the prototype: A pivotal property to prototyping is that it is supposed to be done quickly. If the developers lose sight of this fact, they may try to develop a too complex prototype.

When the prototype is thrown away, the precisely set requirements it provides may not yield a sufficient increase in productivity to make up for the time spent developing the prototype. Users can become stuck in debates over details of the prototype, holding up the development team and delaying the final product.

The expense of implementing prototyping: the start-up costs for building a development team focused on prototyping may be high. Many companies have development methodologies in place, and changing them can mean retraining, retooling, or both. Many companies tend to begin prototyping without bothering to retrain their workers as much as they should.

A common problem with adopting prototyping technology is high expectations for productivity with insufficient effort behind the learning curve. In addition to training for using a prototyping technique, there is an often-overlooked need for developing corporate and project-specific underlying structures to support the technology. When this underlying structure is omitted, lower productivity can often result. If you have enough time, it might also be a good idea to focus on choosing the right tools.

You can create quick and straightforward low-fi prototypes that can be tested immediately or - more complex high-fi prototypes - that are closer to the final products in terms of interactivity, look and feel. Still, their production is more time-consuming and might potentially delay the whole project.

Base the decision on your goals. If providing a good user experience is the project's goal - and it should be - then prototyping has to be part of the UX design process. It is crucial to choose the most effective prototyping method - minimizing work and maximizing learning - depending on the needs of the product.

The result will be an overall improved design based on prototype testing. Share this article. Would you like to discuss the challenges in your project on this topic? Let's talk. Eric Ries suggests adapting the rules of creating the MVP product. Rather than getting the product "right"; or employing the "release early, release often" philosophy. His words, "take what you think it is and cut it in half.

And do that 2 more times! Early adopters can be forgiving, they have the vision. Originally created with the thought of a better way of building software, it is a framework for completing intricate projects. The Scrum framework keeps things simple. It implements the scientific method of empiricism , a theory that states "knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience.

In addition as part of Scrum, the Scrum Values include:. Use Scrum to improve teamwork , communications, and speed. The framework consists of a wish list called product backlog. This moves to sprint planning. In this phase, your team pulls a small chunk from the top of the wish list, a sprint backlog and decides how to implement those pieces. An amount of time to finish the work is decided upon. At that point your work should be potentially shippable.

After the quick sprint is complete, a review is required. The cycle repeats itself at this point. You and your team check items in your product backlog and begin again. There are pros and cons of any prototyping. It's first important to understand prototype models are best utilized when the desired system needs to have a lot of interaction with end users.

When using this type of model, errors typically can be detected much sooner and quicker user feedback is available leading to better solutions. This method may increase the complexity. Your plans may start to extend beyond your original plans.

In addition, "The focus on a limited prototype can distract developers from properly analyzing the complete project. The prototyping methodology allows you to design a working "prototype" or early sample of what's to come. If you are in need of innovative lighting solutions that adapt to your idea, you can start prototyping today.