Session Title
Prototypes: (mis)leading meaningful interactions?
Presenter
sisirnath sangireddy, umea institute of design
Session Type: Discussion
Nowadays the technology is within reach for people from all walks of life. Something could always be made with self-obtained knowledge by various means. This raises a question about the quality of prototyping, the implications of their purpose, methods and prototypes in the interaction design field. Gerhand Fischer, in his article “Beyond couch potatoes” writes “as technology expands greater control moves from designers to the people for whom we design”.
Apart from explaining a product’s shape and visual semantics, a prototype is used to narrate an experience, to simulate and validate behavior. In interaction design we prototype experiences; not just in physical form, methods of meaningful interactions are also explained using prototypes as means.
A purpose-oriented, well executed prototype can provide a platform for user to experience product interactions. At the same time a well executed prototype without a definitive purpose may do more harm than good and can tamper natural interactions and force behavior(s). The purpose (goal) is related to the question a designer asks while prototyping experiences. It is appropriate to ask “how can new technology help!”1 and create meaningful interactions, rather than asking “how can new technology be implemented in to a solution”, which leads to the creation of unnatural interactions.
Depending on when the purpose is realized by an individual in the process of prototyping experiences, there appears to be three different types of users.
While researcher use coding with various technologies in the process of inventing interactive elements, (example is David Merrill’s Siftables) designers prefer pre-made components and technologies to quickly generate prototypes with help of little or no coding (Example Phidgets, Arduino) In case of Hackers, they implement a mix of technologies, ample amount of code to prototype, which can lead to the creation of forced experiences.
Prototyping is used as a prescient tool in the field of interaction design. “Why and how different people are prototyping experiences?” “How they affect natural gestural interactions?” need to be understood with a meaningful dialogue.
1 As mentioned by Tim Brown of Ideo
Biography
Sisirnath is a final year Masters in Interaction Design candidate from the Umea Institute of Design in Sweden with background in industrial design and computer science engineering.
His work includes several diverse projects with varied scale and interests in Interaction Design and design visualisation here at Umea, and had worked on various real time projects in Atlas Copco, Sweden. The recent project he had finished at school was a mobile communication application developed for people with cognitive disabilities, which lead to presenting a research paper at SIDER conference in Denmark.
He is interested working with conceptual development of future Design Interactions and like to examine some of Interaction design process. He intends to participate in creating new forms of tangible interaction platforms for future products and experiences.
Sisirnath.com
8 Comments
Love the idea! Very valid debate.
Very good questions. It is important to stress content, and to think of “why” do something instead of just be fascinated by the technological possibilities of the day and be stuck in the “how” aspects.
Very interesting!!! I particularly liked this bit ” A purpose-oriented, well executed prototype can provide a platform for user to experience product interactions. At the same time a well executed prototype without a definitive purpose may do more harm than good and can tamper natural interactions and force behavior(s)”
Would love to see what arguments you have to support your Idea and debate? What about disruptive technologies…things developed out of context..not considering users in mind…sometime successful?
Is it wrong to change users behaviour by using prototypes?
Nice thought…valid point.
Nice!
As for me, not only is the question of misleading subjects interesting.
But also the misleading of designers themselves.
If a certain level of finishing excludes a direction, and yet if the prototype would have been done differently (although all at the same level) would it influence which direction would have been chosen??
The ‘road not taken’ paradigm.
Will these discussions be recorded? transcribes?
This piece has always been an area of interest for me.. “Why and how different people are prototyping experiences?” “How they affect natural gestural interactions?”
Also glad to see that you are touching upon “creating unnatural reactions”..technology, i feel should never be forced upon..there is a huge potential in bridging the gap betn face-face interaction and technology aided interaction.
Extremely interesting thoughts here..would love to hear in detail.
good point, in another way of thinking about the future, It makes me think backwards, what if it was a Spanish or Chinese or Russian invented the keyboard, what will the layout looks like.
I see a future where prototypes become products as well. Where as designers say “rapid prototyping”, the general public refers to it as “3D printing”, which presumes that the result is already a product itself, which it of course may very well be. Maybe we are moving towards interactions that prototype themselves “on the fly” as they are being spewed out of a printer. Testing and use will be the same thing. Maybe.