An Approach to Low-fidelity Prototyping Based on SOFL Informal Specification

Abstract

Low-fidelity prototyping has been increasingly adopted in software development to facilitate the communication between the developer and the end-user, since it can be simply realised without the need for programming. However, this technique is not mature enough as it lacks a systematic approach to build prototypes and capture user feedback. In this paper, we present a method that provides a systematic way to build low-fidelity prototypes from informal specifications and to collect user feedback for completing or refining the requirements. Three steps are essential for this method. The first step is to derive implementation architecture of the prototype from the specification by determining the design properties of the required functions and to define their relationships. The second step is to construct the prototype based on the architecture using the animation tool in Microsoft PowerPoint. The third step is to gather user's feedback using specific forms during low-fidelity prototyping. We have applied this method to the development of a web-based Travel Agent System. The result shows that our approach is effective in ensuring the quality and efficiency of communication and software requirements, although it still has room for further improvement.