Prototyping in Design and its Importance

In the third and fourth week of the course, we learned the importance of prototype and the tools we could use in order to visualise the ideas of the design.

Mr Mark Billinghurst was the lecturer.

In this post, I will discuss the importance of prototyping in design and how I have approached them and use the techniques in my past works.

Source: https://www.lynda.com/Design-Techniques-tutorials/Design-Thinking-Prototyping/486758-2.html

Reason why prototyping is important:

First of all, the reason why designers prototype is in order to quickly visualise their design in the minds and communicate their ideas. Through prototyping, we can receive feedback from others therefore physically see user experience and the way they interact.

Source: https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ux-design/design-thinking-stage-four-prototyping/

There are multiple and such a variety of ways to approach prototyping. Few examples of prototyping are as follows:

• Sketching

• Storyboards

• UI Mockups

• Interaction Flows

• Video

• Interactive models

• Applications

From sketching to video prototypes, they count as low fidelity prototypes. This is because the user cannot directly interact and experience the design so it is mainly used to visualise the idea. Interactive models and applications, however, are associated with high fidelity prototypes.

These are some of my personal examples of prototyping. Ranging from High-quality rendered models, storyboards, a mock-up to a sketch.

There is a variety of way to communicate an idea as shown above. The lower the fidelity of the model is, the faster the work can be done.

What I learnt from prototyping is that to communicate a rough idea, the best way to approach is by sketching. Sketching lets you help express, develop, generate and elaborate a specific design. It is a way to come up with a vast amount of ideas from bad to good. From there you develop further into a storyboard, a mock-up, a high-rendered model then into an interactive prototype so you can learn user experience and how the user will approach the design.

Conclusion:

From my own personal experience and also learning the theory side of prototyping, I was able to learn its importance in the field of design. Since design interacts often with the user, designers need to know different ways of how to give a better experience to them.