Designing Gestural Interfaces

HIGH-FIDELITY PROTOTYPES

Low-fidelity prototypes can tell you only so much. Once the general concepts, gestures, and flows have been prototyped with low-fidelity methods, it is time to focus on making a prototype that closely mimics the actual experience of the final product: a high-fidelity prototype. If low-fidelity prototypes are about testing concepts, high-fidelity prototypes are about refining those concepts, making sure that what looks good on paper still looks good once it is "alive." The difference between high- and low-fidelity prototypes is simply this: the high-fidelity prototype (mostly) works as it should. When a gesture is made, something happens that doesn't require a "man behind the curtain" or a designer to explain it. The system behaves as it would in the field.

Note

Use high-fidelity prototypes to test and refine the details of the gestural system.

Figure 6-7. With a high-fidelity prototype, you are able to test such things as legibility and ergonomics. Courtesy Stimulant.

As the name suggests, these prototypes require a more serious investment in time and resources to create. With high-fidelity prototypes, the idea is to design and test as many of the details as possible—in interaction, environmental, industrial, and visual design, as well as in engineering and code. Even though it occurs only occasionally, designers, developers, and engineers should strive to create ...