Assessing prototypes' role in design
Ashley H. Williams · 2002
The practice of using prototypes in design processes that involve user participation assumes that it is beneficial to do so-one commonly accepted benefit is that prototyping activities help users generate or articulate design ideas. However, such practice is rarely examined closely. This paper reports primarily on a verbal data analysis conducted to address the assumption that hands-on prototyping necessarily stimulates discussion-I analyze participants' performances with a paper- and computer-based prototype as a means of assessing the prototypes' role in the participatory design-like effort of a community networking project. In doing so, I contrast the two prototypes in terms of the number and kind of utterances participants voiced in response to each.