I think especially in design research prototypes play an important role. For example, Ylva's research had non-functional prototypes that could only give them a general idea of how their idea would look and work. On the other hand, Haibo and his colleagues made a functional prototype that I feel provides more practical data and more information can be presented. Personally, I would give more credibility to those that made a working prototype over just a display because it actually shows that they went through all the steps and not just the motions of their own research.
Even though prototypes aid in research, they also have limitations. They are essentially a work in progress and like any other types of research methods, can have their flaws. Since prototypes are used in early stages of research, they are usually far from the desired end result and this may even effect some of their evaluations. Prototypes can also be expensive and time-consuming and this may have negative effects on the research.
The article I choose this week was IntellBatt: The Smart Battery from the IEEE-Comptuer Society Journal. This article discussed their proposed design of an intelligent multiple cell battery that would sustain a longer lifetime and optimize capacity and charge. They made a simulation environment for the IntellBatt that would mimic the behavior of real cells and evaluated the current trace from a portable DVD player. The theory motivating this design research was improving upon Battery-Aware Task Scheduling techniques to produce a safer and more efficient battery.
Mandal, Suman K., Praveen S.
Bhojwani, Saraju P. Mohanty, and Rabi N. Mahapatra. "IntellBatt: The Smart
Battery." Computer 45.11 (2012): n. pag. Web.
<http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.focus.lib.kth.se/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5374361>.
Hey Nicole,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on the limitations of prototypes (expenses, simplified mockup of a planned product). I also think that a developer has to make a very important decision by choosing between the extent of functionality and the volume of expenditures of a prototype. If I would have to decide between functionality and money I would in general tend to spend more money so the prototype has a higher functionality. Thereby you got more possibilities to check the (potential) customers’ satisfaction and to reveal the weaknesses. Spending less money for a less functional prototype seems more a waste of money because the data won’t be that valid. What do you think about that?
The only problem with having higher expenses on a more functional prototype is the possibly of failure within that prototype. However, I do agree with your point. If you are going to spend the money on a prototype might as well make sure you get the most bang for your money.
DeleteYou talk about the limitations of prototypes, which I strongly agree with. However, prototypes also have advantages like initial apprehension of the artefact and the user feedback. Even though prototypes are costly to fabricate, they certainly contribute a great value to the researcher.
ReplyDeleteYou talked about the research of Ylva concerning their prototypes, do you basically think this research was done properly enough? It was "just" besad on theory and the prototypes were not real prototypes, because they were not programmed to any testing reasons. I was really a bit dissappointed by her presentation, what did u think?
ReplyDelete