“Parallel Prototyping Leads to Better Design Results, More Divergence, and Increased Self-Efficacy” by Steven Dow
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“The study found that a parallel prototyping approach yields better results, more divergent ideas, and that parallel prototypers react more positively to a critique”
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“Without exploration, designers may choose a design concept too early and fail to identify a valuable direction [Cross 2004]. Without refinement, ideas may not reach their full potential”
- “The architect Laseau posits an idealized conceptual model for exploring and refining, where designers iteratively diverge and converge on ideas, eventually narrowing to a best-fit concept [Laseau 1988]. This article investigates the hypothesis that parallel prototyping increases learning, exploration, and design task confidence. More broadly, this research seeks a richer theoretical understanding of creative work to help practitioners and students design more effectively.”
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Parallel Prototyping Promotes Comparison
- “Hypothesis 1. Parallel prototyping leads to feedback comparison and pro-duces higher quality designs.”
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Parallel prototyping encourages exploration
- “Hypothesis 2. Parallel prototyping results in more divergent concepts.”
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Parallel Prototyping fosters design confidence
- “Self-efficacy is a person’s belief about their capabilities to perform towards a specific goal”
- More importantly, Tohidi et al. showed that the presence of multiple alternative concepts gave users license to be more critical with their comments.
- This article hypothesizes that parallel prototyping changes the invest- ment mindset: it encourages investment in a creative process rather than in a particular idea. Serial prototyping may lead people to fixate on a single concept, causing them to construe critique as a rebuke of their only option.
- Hypothesis 3. Parallel prototyping leads to a greater increase in design task-specific self-efficacy.
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Method
- study design
- independent variable = structure of prototyping process
- participants
- materials
- graphics design tool, advertising client, prototoype critique system (preconstructed statements for critique)
- no comparison statements, which is interesting
- dependent measures
- performance - click through rates and google analytics on the target client web site
- divergence - raters assessed pairwise similarity of all conions of each particiants ads
- self-efficacy
- participants rated ability to create ads, understand design problems, detect problems in design idea, incorporate feedback
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Results
- Parallel Ads outperformed serial ads
Witthoft Prototype
- Introduction
- Prototyping helps lower the stakes for exploring new questions by reducing risk-using fewer resources like time, money, and emotional commitment- especially when anxiety about outcomes might keep you from starting.
- imperfect and impermanent by design
- low-resolution nature of prototypes invites a behavior of breaking things you make
- it takes practice to create prototypes that fail well
- What am I doing?
- Giving a prototype definition
- what is a prototype?
- A prototype’s meaning takes different shape based on what you’re asking
- model to show others what an early version of something might look like
- connects a question to an intent
- A prototype is something you build or use. You can poke it start it, break it, measure it, photograph it-whatever.
- To prototype is to cast a thing into action. The act of prototyping elevates a stationary thing or idea into an experience involving creation, adjustment, and under- standing.
- How is a prototype used?
- experience prototype
- my design classes who go straight to making wire- frames and interface click-throughs when they hear the word prototype, without considering what hap- pens before and after one interacts with the app. My cure for this is to use the term experience prototype, to remind them that there is a bigger picture, and to encourage them to role-play the total experience of the product or service.
- Designing what you defne
- (1) identify objectives: here is what im making and here is what i want to learn from it
- (2) Catalog your Curiosity: create list of question
- expand questions into categories based on objectives (ie. functional cognitive and emotonal)
- (3) design the prototype
- looks like
- works like
- functional prototype
- Minimum viable product
- Making with a Mindset
- Using a few mindsets to establish a protocol will help you figure out or improvise your way through those details as you deem them important or not. Try these three mindsets to guide your practice:
- make do by using nothing more than is needed
Chapterm 2
- perfectionism is problematic during the early stages of exploration. It takes practice and constant attention to match your work at the moment with the question of the moment. Try out this two-question gut check as part of your practice:I
- s my work too high-resolution right now?
- What's a "cardboard" version of this I could try first?
- Practice that principle: choose your tools at one or two levels of resolution lower than your final output ni order ot focus first on a question instead of fit and finish.
In Class
The Tech We Want Debrief
- leaning experience - didn’t know about the different events that were on the timeline, but once they read about the event, they could relate to it - felt empowered to add their own
- colors for topics - felt like there were multiple entry points for anybody, which makes it a more inclusive experience
- flet like something we were all a part of
- the prototyping process was really helpful - made everyone think of diverse ideas
- invited diverse group of people
- didn’t constrict too much but had a clear goal, which allows more diverse perspectives to come to the surface
- being actionable about seeking feedback is important - get feedback as soon as possible