Prototyping Outpost

We completely understand the benefits of low fidelity prototypes having realised the benefits that come from making and remaking first hand.

Following the recommendations of the SDC chairs, we created a “magic machine” (read this paper to learn about magic machines — a great method). The act of creating the interaction step-by-step using paper and cardboard and then using that through a bodystorm allowed to see where aspects of the interaction worked well, and where it might get stuck or feel clunky. To us, most important was the act of creation as this made the concept much more concrete and understandable to us (not just for another person who might be participating in an evaluation of some kind).

From our own experience of interacting with our magic machine, we refined our concepts and made decisions on which concepts were ‘better’ at meeting the requirements we had set and our design direction. Whilst the experience is not the ‘real’ experience, it gave us a clearer understanding of what the final experience might be.

We then merged a number of concepts to come up with “Outpost” as our final concept. You can read more about how this concept works on this post that incorporates the scenario and storyboard of an interaction with Outpost. Again, prototyping was an important part of developing the concept in detail. It made us reflect on how information would be presented to people and how they might be able to take that information away for their own use.

Probably one of the real benefits of prototyping as a process is to ensure that you incorporate some kind of reflection. We did this at a number of stages (particularly as we were actually creating the prototype). Again, often the discussion around the completion of a task is more valuable than the output from that task.

You can read our overall reflection on our final product in this post.