Usability Engineering Lifecycle: Prototyping 1

Usability Engineering Lifecycle: Prototyping

Sree Anirudh J Bhandaram

Usability Engineering
Instructor: Kara Rozen
4004-748-70
Winter 2008
Rochester Institute of Technology

Sree Anirudh J Bhandaram

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INTRODUCTION

The basic usability engineering lifecycle contains four phases, an initial requirements

gathering, a series of prototyping and usability tests and a final implementation. This

implementation is then used for future requirements gathering and this cycle repeats.

Requirements
Analysis

Rapid
Prototyping

Usability
Testing

Implementatio
n

Figure 1: Usability Engineering Lifecycle

The word prototype has several meanings, based on the context of its use. In our

context, i.e., in our context, a prototype can be defined as “A model or simulation of a

solution or an information product that demonstrates, for example, its functionality,

partial navigation options and interface” (vceit.com, 2006). A prototype is a contrasting

to the old methods of monolithic development where the whole product or software is

built first and later all the irregularities between design and implementation are ironed

out. There are several reasons why prototyping is important, this paper talks about

Prototyping in the usability engineering lifecycle and its importance.

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IMPORTANCE OF PROTOTYPING

There are several reasons why a prototype is of importance in a Usability Engineering

lifecycle, these include:

• A prototype allows the engineers to visualize the final product.

• A prototype shows what is feasible with current technologies and its limitations. It

can be used to gauge technical feasibility.

• A prototype allows for early customer interaction.

• A prototype facilitates usability testing which helps evolve requirements and

validate them.

• A prototype shows the desired and undesired features of the product early on in

the lifecycle, and appropriate changes can be made saving time and money.

• A prototype also acts a communication tool, keeping all members of the team on

the same page, helping everyone have the same understanding of the system.

• A prototype helps designers and developers evaluate various options and

implement the best ones.

A prototype is invaluable to the lifecycle because of all the advantages it has to offer

including the ability of identifying usability issues in the design, it also encourages the

end-user to take part in the development process and can provide him a teaching

environment.

Sree Anirudh J Bhandaram

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APPROACHES TO PROTOTYPING

According to Bäumer et al. (1996), prototyping approaches can be classified into three

“E”s:

• Exploratory Prototyping, which helps in clarifying requirements and solutions.

Hekmatpour (1987) also referred to this approach as “throw-it-away” prototyping.

Once the prototype has served its purpose, it is thrown away. Since these

prototypes are only temporary, quality, efficiency and error handling among

others are generally ignored for rapid development of the prototype.

• Experimental Prototyping, which focuses on the technical realization of

requirements. This approach usually results in the development of functional

prototypes.

• Evolutionary Prototyping, which is a continuous process of adapting a system to

changing organizational constraints. This approach to prototyping involves all the

stages of development, i.e., design, implementation and evaluation.

(Hekmatpour, 1987). Although all types of prototypes can be built this way, a pilot

system is of particular important.

In addition to these three approaches, a few other approaches to prototyping have been

suggested, such as Incremental Prototyping (The final product is built as separate

prototypes. At the end the separate prototypes are merged in an overall design.

(Wikipedia, 2008)) and Extreme Prototyping.

Depending on the purpose of the prototype, we can develop a prototype in several

different ways; we can develop conceptual prototypes, feasibility prototypes, horizontal

prototypes or vertical prototypes.

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Conceptual prototypes can be used to demonstrate a concept of the system or to

visualize an approach to a system.

Feasibility prototypes can be used to demonstrate the technical or financial feasibility of

the system.

Horizontal prototypes are used mainly to demonstrate the scope of the system; the key

functions are not necessarily developed; only the high level system wide features are

prototyped. These prototypes are useful for showing the variety of capabilities of a

system.

Vertical prototypes are used to demonstrate the key functions of the system, the system

might be incomplete, but a few vital functions are wholly prototyped. This is useful to

visualize a relatively less understood complex feature of the system.

LOW FIDELITY VS HIGH FIDELITY PROTOTYPES

Prototyping has become an essential part of a usability engineering process, but the

decision of using a low fidelity vs. high fidelity prototype is highly debated. Rudd et al.

(1996) portray low fidelity prototypes as being limited in functionality, rudimentary and

having limited user interaction, whereas high fidelity prototypes “faithfully represent the

interface to be implemented in the product”. When prototyping emerging or new

technologies, low fidelity prototypes like paper prototypes, make it harder to visualize

the complete system, they tend to paint a hazy picture of the technology being

prototyped, this is when there’s a requirement to develop a high fidelity prototype. On

the same lines, it doesn’t do us good to implement a high fidelity prototype for a system

that hasn’t been described completely nor has a weak requirements specification, doing

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this would give the users a wrong idea of the system. Selecting the right prototyping

technique is quite difficult and this is a vital decision to be made before prototyping,

Rudd et al. (1996) give us a few advantages and disadvantages of using either of the

fidelities as shown in the figure below.

Figure 2: Relative effectiveness of low vs. high fidelity prototypes

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CONCLUSION

Over the years, owing to the advantages of prototyping, developers and designers have

realized the importance of prototyping and it has become a vital part of the product

development lifecycle. It is imperative to realize that there is no single method of

prototyping used for all projects. Depending on the requirements of the project and the

extent to which the end-user has to visualize the system, a relevant approach to

prototyping must be chosen. Prototyping should be a process that should be well

planned and necessary time and effort should be devoted to make the prototype as

similar to the final system as possible. The disadvantages of a failed prototype are

numerous, including user/customer dissatisfaction which is not worth the time, money or

effort saved by developing a low quality prototype. The fidelity of a prototype (low or

high) must be chosen carefully based on the system to avoid showing too much or too

less to the end user. A few factors to be considered while developing a prototype are

cost constraints, communication levels, market requirement, involvement of end user,

schedule constraints and screen layout among others. To concur, it is really important

for a product development lifecycle to include prototyping and it is not just sufficient to

develop a prototype, perfecting it should also be a goal!

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REFERENCES

vceit.com (2006). Official IT Glossary, referenced on 01.24.09 from

http://www.mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au/vceit/glossary.htm

Bäumer et al. (1996). User interface prototyping—concepts, tools, and experience.

ICSE '96: Proceedings of the 18th international conference on Software

engineering, May. Pages: 532–541.

Hekmatpour (1987). Experience with evolutionary prototyping in a large software

project. SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, Volume 12 Issue 1. Pages: 38–

41.

Wikipedia (2008). Software prototyping. Referenced on 01.24.09 from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_prototyping

Rudd et al. (1996). Low vs. high-fidelity prototyping debate.

Interactions , Volume 3 Issue 1, January. Pages: 76-85.

Sree Anirudh J Bhandaram