My Role

This was a marathon project where I had to go through multiple iterative phases of creating the same product with different representations and evolving prototyping methods.

I spearheaded the research into the traditional product designer’s toolkit where I would be the sole designer and project manager with guidance from my Industrial Designer Professor Young Mi Choi.

With her guidance, I tackled various design obstacles such as organizing and conducting studies, maintaining a consistent design environment, and learning new techniques quickly to adapt to the evolving needs of emerging prototyping methods.

Initial Observations:

Creating each individual asset required a completely different set of tools and expertise with the associated software and hardware. These individual steps were categorized as qualitative and quantitative data throughout the research period.

When diving into the process I have identified these observations:

• Qualitative and quantitative data provided by the user studies must be analyzed in parallel and given value.

• Existing prototyping methods have hard set rules that designers must observe to consistently create their assets.

• The journey of creating each design asset have their own intrinsic value that affects the designer’s decision to use such method to display different perspectives of their final product.
  

Creation of Each Asset

Through user interviews we determined 4 existing prototyping methods to test against the one emerging prototyping method. By creating each asset individually, I would have mapped out a journey map of each of the method which will help me understand the viability of each creation process.

• Sketch Visual Model

• Storyboard

• 3d rendered Model

• Appearance Model

• Tangible Augmented Reality Model

Each Asset went through multiple iterations to confirm these three steps.

• Create the most accurate representation of the original product.

• Through iteration, the designer discovers new aspects of the product and the design process.

• Discover tools and best practices for each asset to further streamline the process.

Interview and User Feedback

After the creation of each asset, user interviews and user journey maps were created through a process called Initial Coding, which is a process where survey participants provide feedback through qualitative and quantitative opinions.

The data was translated into a code, which is a word or phrase that distills the meaning of a statement provided by the participant.

The codes have been examined to form apparent patterns that actively facilitate the development of unique categories followed by theoretical inferences.  The coding cycles led to the distillation of feedback collected from the validation process of the representation.

Making Sense of the Data

The coding cycles led to the distillation of feedback collected from the validation process of the representation into these three main categories.

• Physical- This category defined an aspect of the representation where the user noticed differences between physical aspects that were missing or misrepresented of the representation as compared to the real product.

• Digital - This category defined an aspect of the representation where the user noticed differences between digital aspects that were missing or misrepresented in the representation as compared to the real product.

• Experiential - This category defined an aspect of the representation where the user noticed differences between the subtle experiences that were missing or misrepresented in the representation as compared to the real product.

Results

The result of this study validated some presumptions but opened up many more questions. Validation of individual prototyping methods provided constructive feedback to fine tune and improve aspects of each representation. The validation studies also provided a perspective on how users view different prototype’s advantages and disadvantages depending on the context on how they were presented.

The validation study from the augmented reality model provided feedback that will help designers and engineers to rapidly prototype functions for users to test and provide substantial feedback that cannot be easily provided by other design representation.

In the following phase, each design representation will be improved and updated based on the feedback provided during the validation process. The representation will be presented next without the presence of the real product as comparative and physical guide. The augmented reality model and a new prototyping method known as tangible augmented reality model will be explored extensively in comparison to traditional prototyping methods.

Lessons Learnt

This project, personally challenged me to fully understand the prototyping process, contextual research, and universal design. The most relevant lessons as a design researcher and principle fabricator were the following:

Each prototyping method has its pros and cons to both the designer creating the asset as well as how much value could be provided to the user perceiving the prototype. This allowed me to consider balancing other needs of the process such as feasibility and time consumption.

Validation studies consume a large amount of time and resources to properly conduct. Therefore each asset that designer created accurately depict as possible so that the user will only focus on the prototypes attribute instead of the potential glaring flaws with the asset.