Prototypes and prototyping in design research
Stephan S.A.G. Wensveen, Ben Matthews · 2014
This chapter discusses the spectrum of roles that prototypes and processes of prototyping play in design research, illustrating these different roles through published examples. It focuses will be on the roles of prototypes as vehicles for research about, for and through design. The chapter also focuses on prototyping within research processes that necessarily involve design activities, which we will refer to as constructive design research, i.e. “research that imagines and builds new things and describes and explains these constructions”. When prototypes function as an experimental component, such ‘filtering’ dimensions can be treated as independent variables, which are systematically varied to better learn how they influence the behaviour of the dependant variables. A similar role is played by ‘provotypes’, which are prototypes that are used to provoke reactions and insights, designed to expose taken-for-granted aspects of users’ values and practices. In our cases, the process of prototyping becomes a means of inquiry, akin to a research method.