Designing Connected Products

Chapter 14. Iterative Design: Prototyping and Learning

BY ELIZABETH GOODMAN

Iterative design—rounds of observing the world, generating ideas, building prototypes, observing the prototypes in use, and returning to idea generation—is the best way to build connected products and services that are not just useful but a joy to use. In previous chapters, we discussed observation and idea generation. In this chapter, we’ll discuss prototyping and evaluation, which typically go hand in hand in iterative design processes. Both are necessary for discovering new possibilities and avoiding pitfalls.

This chapter introduces:

• Characteristic dynamics of iterative prototyping and evaluation (The Necessity of Working Iteratively)

• Lightweight methods for prototyping initial product ideas (What Does the World Look Like with Your Product in It?), embodied experiences (Experience prototypes), services (How Does a Product Support a Service (and Vice Versa)?), working algorithms and streams of data (How Do We Prototype with Data?), and novel interaction modes (How Will People Interact with an Interface?)

It also addresses the following issues:

• What prototypes are for (Using Prototypes to Answer Questions)

• How to decide what to prototype (How Do You Decide What to Prototype?)

• Why teams avoid evaluation...and what to do about it (Evaluation: Success Demands Failure)

The Necessity of Working Iteratively

In theory, iterative design is very simple: you learn about a situation, you make something to intervene in it, ...