Week 02

Prototype Roles

To analyze the different types of prototypes that can be done in the design process, I took as a basis an advertising campaign that I did this year to analyze the different prototypes that were part of the process.
CREATIVE IDEA:
Given the insecurity of the streets in Guatemala City, our idea was to use recovered stolen cellphones as a weapon against thieves, by transforming them into security cameras that would connect to a network of user-generated devices like this, to make the streets of Guatemala safer, through the internet of Tuenti.

FIRST PROTOTYPE (ROLE 3)
"Fake it to make it" (Case video)

ILLUSTRATION OR DEMONSTRATION:

First, we created a protovideo with stock images to prototype the storytelling of the idea which showed the idea as if it had already been done, to receive feedback from different creative leaders in the region about it, to later adjust it before executing it according to their comments.

*(The video above is not the protovideo, but the final video itself) .

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A CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE IS EQUALLY CRUCIAL

We reviewed the case study with different creatives from all Latin America to see what they thought of the initial idea, and what they understand from the case video. After that, we did some adjustments and created a new video before creating the material prototype of the idea.

This prototype let us do a critical evaluation of the idea between different creatives, which helped us a lot in the final process.

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SECOND PROTOTYPE (ROLE 4)
PHYSICAL PROTOTYPE

DRIVER FOR THE RESEARCH DIRECTION:
The main role of the prototype was to create the first model of the idea an check with the design team how would it work in real life, and which would be the better way to finally produce it.

The process of crafting the artifacts:
The process of crafting started by investigating different technologies and asking some experts, and after that, we created the prototype the way we thought it would work, but after producing it, we discovered that: 

  • The wood was too heavy.
  • The solar panel needed for it to work was too big.
  • The battery needed, ads too much weight.
  • It gets too hot because the cell phone is in constant streaming, and also uses old technology.
After these prototypes, we change the energy source and the size of the box so that it weighs less, and we add a fan to the box, to help cooling the cell phone.

…IN MY FUTURE PROTOTYPES…

In my future prototypes, I would like to use more the ROLE #2 and ROLE #1, because I think that with number 1, at the beginning of the prototyping would be really useful to see how it works in real life and if some hypothesis about the functionality of the design would work or not. And I think that once you are starting to test how it works in an environment whit users, role number 2 would give us more data to see if the prototype works as it´s meant to be. 
 
I think that all of the four roles of prototyping described in the class and lecture are helpful in different moments of the design process, and understanding the difference between each of them, let us decide which could help us in a certain way or for a certain need we have with our design.
 
For me, a probable mix of the prototype roles could be, to begin with a demonstration prototype (R3) to get feedback of the rough idea without much details or a bigger explanation of how it works to use it as a research archetype and get some ideas from people of how they think it might work. After that, I would investigate more about the hypothesis that appears on people's commentaries about how they think the idea could work, and would roughly prototype something that lets me test if that hypothesis works or not (R1). Then I would do rough prototypes of the whole device or idea as design research to check with materials, sizes, shapes and a lot of different stuff related to the crafting (R4). Finally, I would put it into real users to see how they react to the object/product/service/device and generate a discussion about it, maybe in some sort of “focus group” with a certain way to gather information from them (R2).
 
Even if maybe I had already used most of them, I had never seen some of them also as prototypes, and I think that understanding them will help us to be couscous of the kind of information we could get or look for with each one of them.

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