Sketching and Prototyping: The Centrifugal and the Centripetal Power

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In this essay, I shall explore how sketching and prototyping can help in designing an interactive system intended to encourage people to take a walk. In the design process is important to get the design right, and then get the right design (Buxton, 2007). While sketching help in aid to getting the design right, supporting the creative design process and exploring different ideas, prototyping supports choosing the right design, by testing how the product will look like, behave like, and work like (Buchenau & Suri, 2000). Sketching can be compared to a centrifugal power that radiates from the design problem, which allows exploring solutions to be explored. Whereas, prototyping is the centripetal force, moving back to the main problem with a final solution. (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Sketching - the centrifugal power. Prototyping - the centripetal power.

There is still confusion about the meaning of sketching and prototyping in the field. In this paperhere, I refer to sketching as the activity of exploring different ideas, and to prototypinge as the activity that aims to test technical feasibility, regardless regardless of the technology used to implement these design tools. Sketching is used at the beginning of the design process, whereas prototyping is more likely to be used toward the end of the design process.

Sketching and prototyping are the most flexible tools that can support iterative development. They were traditionally used in graphic and product design fields but are now widely used in human-computer interaction (HCI). In the HCI field, there is a tendency to deal with design problems as tame problems that require a logical to be approached with logic. Neverthelessapproach. Nevertheless, many studies have argued that ...

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