Building Prototypes And Evaluating Methods: Tips And Techniques

Approaches to Building Prototypes

As leading the team of HCI designer for the development of the mobile device that would serve the role of receptionist for Buffalo Pediatrics a prototype of the interface is needed to be developed. For starting the development of the protype of the application the disagreement are needed to be eliminated for eliminating its impact on the project development timeline.

1. Alternative Approaches to building prototypes:The alternative approaches to building prototype can be divided into three namely Rapid Prototyping, Incremental Prototyping, and Evolutionary Prototyping (Xiao et al., 2016). All three of the prototyping methods have individual strengths and weaknesses. The explanation of these prototyping methods had been given below,

Rapid Prototyping: According to Exner et al. (2014), the rapid prototyping is developed with the consideration that the developed prototype would not become the part of the final outcome. The prototype developed in this approach would be used for exploring the options and collecting feedbacks from the clients/end users. Layout, interface design, and interaction style are some of the applications of rapid prototyping.

Incremental Prototyping: The incremental prototyping follows the method of building blocks and the addition and integration of the parts (Deniaud et al., 2015). It is based on the overall design of the solution and the prototype developed would be a part of the final solution. The approach helps in allowing the end users or the clients for testing the functionality and the developed components. Application designing is the main application of incremental prototyping.

Evolutionary Prototyping: According to Todorov et al. (2017), the evolutionary prototyping is an iterative prototyping process as it involves the development of the mature system using a series of the prototype iterations. The process involves a number of refinements until the solution is formed and each of the iteration of prototyped comprise of some modifications. The approach is used when the specific requirements have been aligned.

1. Comparing Rapid, Incremental, and Evolutionary Prototyping:The comparison of the methods of rapid, incremental, and evolutionary prototyping is shown below,

The Evolutionary prototyping should be used for the execution of the works in this phase as it would help in easing the management of the changes. The iterative prototyping would be helpful for the execution of the changes and modification in the project (Todorov et al., 2017). It would assist in case any change from the client would be required. The evolutionary prototyping would enable the step by step modification so that the final outcome can align with the expected duration.

1. For conducting a heuristic evaluation on the prototype developed for the frond desk application for Buffalo Pediatrcs the usability guidelines are evaluated. The user controls for the application interface is evaluated such that the users are in control and appropriate controls are provided to the user for using the application. Overloading the interface with cognitive, visual, tactile, auditory feature can cause limitation for the user for using the application. The modal integrity is evaluated for performing the heuristic evaluation of the prototype and the interface should attract ore number of people with its appropriate design. The heuristic approach and cognitive walkthrough are used for the inspection of the usability of the application interface designed for the organization. The user goals are identified and the problems faced by the user while learning to use the interface is identified. For conducting the cognitive walkthrough a set of questions are needed to be answered and the user immediate goal is needed to be described.

The trade-offs that should be considered for selecting the heuristic evaluation is that the potential problem is needed to be identified and a research should be done on the usability guidelines for the establishment of the appropriate list of heuristic. The evaluator should be selected and they should not be the end users. The evaluator should have knowledge about the domain and briefed with the functionality of the application. For the evaluation of the usability it should be divided into three phases and the problems should be recorded and shared with the development team for the rectification of the problem.

Rapid Prototyping

For the analysis of the usability of the front desk application the cognitive walkthrough is proposed because it helps in identification of the next atomic action that should be taken for the development of the user interface. The accessibility of the user and their association with the application is also identified and it helps in aligning the application interface design with the requirement of the user and reducing the error in the final application.

The evaluation should be done by an expert who have domain expertise in the medical industry and familiar with the common queries that are made by the user to a receptionist. The end user should not be selected because they don’t have general understanding about the functionality of the application.  

1. The usability testing is considered as a type of evaluation and there are different other evaluation such as heuristic, cognitive, etc. It is used for the evaluation of the usability and it is dependent on two types of data i.e. qualitative and quantitative data.

While designing a usability study firstly a prototype of the product should be developed that should have limited functionality. In the second stage a draft of the test plan should be prepared with open ended questions. In the third stage the test participants should be recruited with the analysis of the characteristics of the user. In the fourth stage the test should be performed by guiding the test participants throughout the process. The test results should be documented and the issues should be corrected for enhancing the performance of the application.

The usability testing plan is created by defining the methodology, participants, training, procedure, roles and responsibility of the tester involved for testing the usability of the application. The usability tasks and the metrics should be identified for the management of the usability goals management of the severity of the problem. The results of the evaluation should be reported and the result should be used for correcting the errors and increase the efficiency of the application interface.

1. The usability testing and the heuristic evaluation are not mutually exclusive since there are many aspects that are covered in both of the evaluation methodology. The problems in the usability are discovered for categorizing the problem and identification of the impact of the problem. The heuristic evaluation is conducted for the identification of the compatibility and identification of the preference.

References

Deniaud, S., Descamps, P., Hilaire, V., Lamotte, O., & Rodriguez, S. (2015). An analysis and prototyping approach for cyber-physical systems. Procedia Computer Science, 56, 520-525.

Exner, K., Lindow, K., Buchholz, C., & Stark, R. (2014). Validation of product-service systems–a prototyping approach. Procedia CIRP, 16, 68-73.

Todorov, G., Kamberov, K., Kralov, I., & Ignatov, I. (2017, December). Influence of the contact roughness upon railway monobloc wheel acoustic behaviour on virtual prototyping approach. In AIP Conference Proceedings (Vol. 1910, No. 1, p. 020014). AIP Publishing.

Xiao, W., Zaeem, M. A., Bal, B. S., & Rahaman, M. N. (2016). Creation of bioactive glass (13–93) scaffolds for structural bone repair using a combined finite element modeling and rapid prototyping approach. Materials Science and Engineering: C, 68, 651-662.