Abstract
Prototyping is interwoven with nearly all product, service, and systems development efforts. A prototype is a pre-production representation of some aspect of a concept or final design. Prototyping often predetermines a large portion of resource deployment in development and influences design project success. This review surveys literature sources in engineering, management, design science, and architecture. The study is focused around design prototyping for early stage design. Insights are synthesized from critical review of the literature: key objectives of prototyping, critical review of major techniques, relationships between techniques, and a strategy matrix to connect objectives to techniques. The review is supported with exemplar prototypes provided from industrial design efforts. Techniques are roughly categorized into those that improve the outcomes of prototyping directly, and those that enable prototyping through lowering of cost and time. Compact descriptions of each technique provide a foundation to compare the potential benefits and drawbacks of each. The review concludes with a summary of key observations, highlighted opportunities in the research, and a vision of the future of prototyping. This review aims to provide a resource for designers as well as set a trajectory for continuing innovation in the scientific research of design prototyping.
Highlights
Construct a clear testing objective Early prototyping is the most critical Prototypes lead to functional ideas Fast prototyping reduces fixation Feedback may induce corrections and increase fixation End-user testing may enhance performance assessment accuracy Higher fidelity representations lead to accurate interpretation of the design. Timing Both empirical, and industry studies highlight that early prototyping is critical for innovation (Rothenberg 1990; Drezner 1992; Yang 2005; Jang & Schunn 2012), during the first 30% of a design project (Elsen et al 2012), it is especially critical to test the challenging systems (Otto & Wood 2001)
The embodiment of each iteration of each concept can be described with four characteristics: the scale, the system level, the requirements fidelity, and the media. These approaches are independent of problem type or design domain. It applies to development of electrical, mechanical, systems, architectural, software, or service designs
Virtual prototypes allow for testing at a more rapid pace and reduced cost compared to physical prototypes (Christie et al 2012)
Summary
This section explores common objectives of prototyping To acquire this list, first the Authors’ reviewed the full set of articles to filter those which discuss the objectives of prototyping as a process. First the Authors’ reviewed the full set of articles to filter those which discuss the objectives of prototyping as a process This resulted in a list of forty articles. Prototypes are valuable for communicating concepts within the design team (Reed Doke 1990; Buchenau & Suri 2000) This objective encompasses usability testing to explore human factors in design. Active learning Active learning is the process of gaining new knowledge about the design space or relevant phenomena In this context, active learning applies in the educational sense, but in terms of advancing designer’s mental or analytical models of phenomenal interactions. Physical model construction may help identify differences between a concept and real behavior (Lemons et al 2010)
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