We have defined a prototype as an early, unfinished version of a product, built to test one or more aspects of that product.
An interactive prototype is one where the interactions have been built into the prototype so they can be tested, either internally by the team or externally with users.
You can test interactions without building them into the prototype. For example, you can create a sequence of sketches, wireframes, or high graphical fidelity mockups, and simulate the interactions and screen responses by stepping through manually. However, in this case the prototypes themselves are not interactive.
There are three ways to understand the meaning of an interactive prototype, shown here in order of increasing ...
