Design prototyping methods: state of the art in strategies, techniques, and guidelines

Abstract

Prototyping is interwoven with nearly all product, service, and systems development efforts. A prototype is a pre-production representation of some aspect of a concept or final design. Prototyping often predetermines a large portion of resource deployment in development and influences design project success. This review surveys literature sources in engineering, management, design science, and architecture. The study is focused around design prototyping for early stage design. Insights are synthesized from critical review of the literature: key objectives of prototyping, critical review of major techniques, relationships between techniques, and a strategy matrix to connect objectives to techniques. The review is supported with exemplar prototypes provided from industrial design efforts. Techniques are roughly categorized into those that improve the outcomes of prototyping directly, and those that enable prototyping through lowering of cost and time. Compact descriptions of each technique provide a foundation to compare the potential benefits and drawbacks of each. The review concludes with a summary of key observations, highlighted opportunities in the research, and a vision of the future of prototyping. This review aims to provide a resource for designers as well as set a trajectory for continuing innovation in the scientific research of design prototyping.

Prototyping Canvas: Design Tool for Planning Purposeful Prototypes

“…To increase the efficiency and effectiveness of prototype practice, researchers have proposed multiple prototyping methods and strategies from the Prototype for X (PFX) framework to a strategic design prototyping methodology that includes seven prototyping techniques (Camburn et al, 2015). Please refer to Menold's dissertation for an extensive review of current prototyping strategies , including these additional references (Camburn et al, 2017a;Christie et al, 2012;Hamon, 2017;Moe et al, 2004;Dunlap et al, 2014). Many of these strategies have been tested with student designers and are helpful in guiding them through prototyping practices, while also teaching fundamental principles about the importance of prototypes.…”

“…Many strategies aim to minimize the resources used to maximize the desired outcome. This was based on the following literature: Menold et al, 2017;Menold et al, 2018;Camburn et al, 2015;Camburn et al, 2017a;Christie et al, 2012;Hamon, 2017;Moe et al, 2004;Dunlap et al, 2014). On the canvas, this motivates the creation of three categories: "Building Plan", "Testing Plan", and "Insights."…”

“…The Prototyping Approaches section was added to directly link validated prototyping strategies and reduce cognitive load of participants. This section lists thirteen different prototyping strategies, which were identified from the literature review on prototyping strategies in engineering design Menold et al, 2017;Camburn et al, 2015;Camburn et al, 2017a;Christie et al, 2012;Hamon, 2017;Moe et al, 2004;Dunlap et al, 2014). The content of both categories was discussed in the presentation given before the earlier version of the Prototyping Canvas was tested, but they were not explicitly listed on the canvas in the previous version.…”

Testing in the incremental design and development of complex products

“…Another activity closely related to testing is prototyping (Menold et al 2018). A prototype, defined as a "preproduction representation of some aspect of a concept or final design" (Camburn et al 2017), is required for many testing situations although prototyping can also have other purposes, such as to support design communication. For more information on research into design prototyping and its relationship to testing, the reader is referred to the literature (IEEE 1990) Testing: An activity in which a system or component is executed under specified conditions, the results are observed or recorded, and an evaluation is made of some aspect of the system or component Verification: The process of evaluating a system or component to determine whether the products of a given development phase satisfy the conditions imposed at the start of that phase Validation: The process of evaluating a system or component during or at the end of the development process to determine whether it satisfies specified requirements ISO 9000 Quality management system (Hoyle 2009) Testing: (Definition not found) Verification: a process to ensure through the provision of objective evidence that specified requirements has been fulfilled Validation: a process to confirm that resulting product is capable of fulfilling the requirements for the specified application or intended use where known Telecommunication community (Engel 2010) Testing: (1) Physical measurements taken to verify conclusions obtained from mathematical modelling and analysis.…”

“…(2) The checking of data for correctness or for compliance with applicable standards, rules and conventions Modelling and simulation community Balci (1998) Testing: ascertaining whether inaccuracies or errors exist in a model. (Shabi et al 2017) Testing: "Operating or activating a realized product or system under specified conditions and observing or recording the exhibited behaviour" Verification: "Evaluat[ing] a realized product and prov[ing] its compliance with engineering requirements" Validation: "Evaluating a product against specified (or unspecified) customer requirements to determine whether the product satisfies its stakeholders" reviews by Zorriassatine et al (2003) and Camburn et al (2017).…”