Deco2300 Blog

Throughout this course, my perception on prototyping has been changing rapidly. I thought that prototypes are either physical or virtual. However, it is apparent that prototypes can be a combination of the two. The best example is makey makey. The user interaction is physical and the user interface may be virtual (game or Unity, etc). I was right about you can use anything to make a prototype, even a piece of paper would be suitable. In the beginning, I thought that you only make prototypes at the beginning of a project, but it has become clear that you can prototype at every stage of the project, to ensure that something works the way you want or looks the way you want. What prototyping means to me in my degree is seeing things from a different perspective and testing it. There are many instances where I needed to look outside the box to make an appropriate prototype and test it, such as the dark horse prototype. Prototyping is useful as it allows you to verify things through testing.

Throughout this course, I have learnt many things such as how to use makeymakey and unity. Overall, it was a very fun and hands on course that taught me many things. Using the makeymakey was the most enjoyable aspect for me as it gave me the freedom to make whatever I wanted, provided it met the guidelines. This course also helps with creative thinking and design due to the restrictions such as having a novel form of interaction.

As this was the third and final interactive prototype, I think that it served its purpose quite well. My goal was to find potential methods of interacting and to test my usability if the user had no hands. The methods that the testers chose were of their own as I did not give them instructions on how to interact with the device, only the restriction which was you can't use your hands. I think that it served its purpose as it showed me interesting ways of interacting as well as help test my own chosen method of interaction. The dark horse prototype was overall the funnest to test as it was more based off the user's imagination.