. On the other,
At the other, On the other hand let me just show you an
example of a comprehensive prototype. It's what we normally, I think, we think
of as a prototype. This is an example of a media shelf that
I've designed for my house. I wanted one that was fairly shallow in
depth that would clear a door and not take too much room in the,
Not take too much space in the room. I was having a hard time finding a
standard product, So I designed one myself.
And I built a simple prototype with using less that $ten worth of materials, that I
was able to buy at the home improvement store, I was able to answer most of the
questions of concern, including communicating to my wife and children what
that media stand would look like and how it would fit.
And on the basis of that comprehensive prototype, was able to go ahead and
proceed to design the actual final artifact that is now on the house.
So that's an example of a comprehensive prototype, as distinct from a focused
prototype. .
A second distinction that I want to make is between physical and analytical
prototypes. Not all prototypes have to be physical.
Now, of course, a prototype of a digital good, like a website or a service product
like a car rental system. Those aren't going to be physical
prototypes because the artifact itself isn't physical.
But even for an artifact that is physical, even for the design of such a physical
artifact. The prototype need not be physical and it
can take on an analytical form. So, let me give you some examples of, of
analytical and physical. My colleague and friend David Robertson
was designing a new kitchen for his house and he was concerned with how it would
feel, what the shapes would be like, how the configuration would work,
A so he built a cardboard kitchen, which is shown here which has the shapes of all
the, the, the cabinets and the counters and where they would all go.
That was very useful. That's an example of a focused, physical
prototype. When I designed my own kitchen, I took a
different approach and I designed my kitchen in a digital illustration tool,
modeling tool, called Google SketchUp, Which by the way, is freely available if
any of you want to use it. It's quite easy to learn as well.
But, here's my kitchen designed in Google SketchUp and that was very useful as a way
to analytically describe the kitchen. And let me answer many other questions
about the kitchen. Now, of course, that's not a physical
prototype. It's an analytical prototype,
But still useful in communicating and in understanding what the kitchen would look
like, and how it might work. So in some prototypes might, may be
focused or comprehensive, They may be analytical or they may be
physical. Any of those approaches, can still be an
approximation of the artifact on one or more dimensions of interest and therefore
satisfies our definition of a prototype.