4.5 Prototype Framework

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From the course by University of Pennsylvania

Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society

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University of Pennsylvania

Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society

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This is a course aimed at making you a better designer. The course marries theory and practice, as both are valuable in improving design performance. Lectures and readings will lay out the fundamental concepts that underpin design as a human activity. Weekly design challenges test your ability to apply those ideas to solve real problems. The course is deliberately broad - spanning all domains of design, including architecture, graphics, services, apparel, engineered goods, and products. The emphasis of the course is the basic design process: define, explore, select, and refine. You, the student, bring to the course your particular interests and expertise related to, for instance, engineering, furniture, fashion, architecture, or products. In prior sessions of the course about half of the participants were novices and about half had prior professional design expertise. Both groups seem to benefit substantially from the course. All project work is evaluated by your peers -- and indeed, you will also be a peer reviewer. This format allows you to see an interesting collection of projects while getting useful feedback on your own project.

From the lesson

Week #4: Concept Selection and Prototyping

This module was created to help you understand the selection process so that you can choose one design for prototyping. You'll learn key techniques for evaluating your design concepts, including the selection matrix, and the scoring matrix. And once you've selected some designs, you will also learn the uses and value of prototyping. You'll explore how prototypes are used to answer questions, to communicate and to distinguish milestones in the design process, and you will also work through the prototyping process so you can begin building your own, which you will submit for peer review. By the end of this module, you'll have selected one or more design concepts for prototyping, built prototypes, and received feedback on them from your peers. You'll also get to see some of your peers' designs as well.

4.1 Intro to Concept Selection3:57

4.2 The Concept Selection Matrix12:31

4.3 The Concept Scoring Matrix4:21

4.3b Concept Testing12:19

4.4 Introduction to Prototyping6:12

4.5 Prototype Framework6:17

4.6 What are Prototypes Used For?9:18

4.7 Building Stuff5:20

4.8 Scoop Example - Making Prototypes7:38

4.9 Scoop Example - Testing Prototypes7:01

Meet the Instructors

Karl T. Ulrich
Vice Dean of Entrepreneurship and Innovation
The Wharton School

We've defined prototype as an approximation of an artifact on one or

more dimensions of interest and that last bit of that phrase,

One or more dimensions of interest, suggests that a prototype need not

necessarily approximate the artifact on all it's dimensions.

And in fact, it's useful to think about. Two extremes.

At1 extreme Protatechs can be very focused on one or a few dimensions of interest at

the other extreme, they can be comprehensive and that is, essentially

capture most or all of the aspects or dimensions of the artifact.

Let me give you an example. I was designing a, a battery pack for an

electric bicycle and I was very interested in using these cells, these lithium cells,

that were made, that are made by A123, and, I was also interested in the idea of

using a bicycle water bottle as the storage container, for the battery pack.

That would give us the ability to use the water bottle cage on a bicycle to hold the

battery pack. The question I want answered was, how many

of these, A one, two, three, cells would fit in a standard water bottle?

Now, of course, you could do that mathematically.

And you could maybe even use a three dimensional computer model,

But instead I chose to simply make some models of battery cells out of a wooden

dowel that I bought at the hardware store, that are very close in dimension to the

A123 cells. And that let me play with the

configuration and packing of those cells in a very real way, without having the

precarious task of working with live lithium batteries that contain a lot of

energy. And in, in fact I was able to figure out

how to pack the cells that, in fact, five will fit, in a row, but not six.

In a standard water bottle back and to do that very efficiently and, and quickly.

This however is not a comprehensive prototype,

Of course I can't power my electric bicycle with this battery pack.

It's focused, in the sense that it only approximates the artifact on one dimension

of interest and that is its physical shape, which allows me to answer only one

of the many questions that I might be concerned with respect to this artifact.

. On the other,

At the other, On the other hand let me just show you an

example of a comprehensive prototype. It's what we normally, I think, we think

of as a prototype. This is an example of a media shelf that

I've designed for my house. I wanted one that was fairly shallow in

depth that would clear a door and not take too much room in the,

Not take too much space in the room. I was having a hard time finding a

standard product, So I designed one myself.

And I built a simple prototype with using less that $ten worth of materials, that I

was able to buy at the home improvement store, I was able to answer most of the

questions of concern, including communicating to my wife and children what

that media stand would look like and how it would fit.

And on the basis of that comprehensive prototype, was able to go ahead and

proceed to design the actual final artifact that is now on the house.

So that's an example of a comprehensive prototype, as distinct from a focused

prototype. .

A second distinction that I want to make is between physical and analytical

prototypes. Not all prototypes have to be physical.

Now, of course, a prototype of a digital good, like a website or a service product

like a car rental system. Those aren't going to be physical

prototypes because the artifact itself isn't physical.

But even for an artifact that is physical, even for the design of such a physical

artifact. The prototype need not be physical and it

can take on an analytical form. So, let me give you some examples of, of

analytical and physical. My colleague and friend David Robertson

was designing a new kitchen for his house and he was concerned with how it would

feel, what the shapes would be like, how the configuration would work,

A so he built a cardboard kitchen, which is shown here which has the shapes of all

the, the, the cabinets and the counters and where they would all go.

That was very useful. That's an example of a focused, physical

prototype. When I designed my own kitchen, I took a

different approach and I designed my kitchen in a digital illustration tool,

modeling tool, called Google SketchUp, Which by the way, is freely available if

any of you want to use it. It's quite easy to learn as well.

But, here's my kitchen designed in Google SketchUp and that was very useful as a way

to analytically describe the kitchen. And let me answer many other questions

about the kitchen. Now, of course, that's not a physical

prototype. It's an analytical prototype,

But still useful in communicating and in understanding what the kitchen would look

like, and how it might work. So in some prototypes might, may be

focused or comprehensive, They may be analytical or they may be

physical. Any of those approaches, can still be an

approximation of the artifact on one or more dimensions of interest and therefore

satisfies our definition of a prototype.

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