LOGRO SEMANA 1

According to Otto and Wood (2001), different subgroups of a product development team can use prototypes for different purposes. It happens because prototypes bring a variety of benefits and different types serve different purposes. Therefore, it is important to un- derstand potential benefits of each type of the prototype and the appropriate time to make it. Table below shows that researchers mostly agree on purposes of prototypes

Table 8. Purposes of prototypes

Table above shows what prototypes are used to. According to Ulrich and Eppinger (2012), learning is the most common reason to make a porotype. It helps product development team to find answers for two most common questions: “Will it work?” and “Will it meet the customer needs?”. Although Otto and Wood (2001) name it feasibility, the arguments behind are quite the same. This purpose serves the same needs: to understand if it will work and if it meets the customer needs. Hence, these two purposes could be combined as one.

Otto and Wood (2001) claim that prototypes enhance communication with all kinds of shareholders of the product. Hence, communication is highlighted as a purpose. Ulrich and Eppinger (2012) add that it is particularly true for physical prototypes since it easier to understand the ideas of the product for all the parties, whereas analytical prototypes could be too complicated for someone who is not working on it.

Ulrich and Eppinger (2012) claim that prototypes are often used to ensure that different parts of the product work fine with each other. They call it integration purpose. It is needed because sometimes there are many subgroups of production process and when the groups work separately different groups might come up with a solution which does not match with a solution of another group. For instance, when the design of a product does

Purpose

Otto and Wood (2001)

Ulrich and Eppinger (2012) Learning + Communication + + Integration + Milestones/scheduling + + Demonstration +

not allow some technical feature. For this purpose, comprehensive prototypes work the best since they have most or all the features of the product.

Another purpose of prototypes is scheduling or milestones. Prototypes help to understand schedule for the product development team. Moreover, Otto and Wood (2001) add that prototypes speed up decision making process and hence, the whole process.

Furthermore, it is a natural wish of top-managers and customers to see how well devel- opment process is going on. Usually the best way to show this is prototypes, and that is the last purpose - demonstration.

It has been mentioned that some prototypes obviously serve better for some purposes than others. Hence, it is important to distinguish what prototypes correspond to what purpose. Figure 24 shows comparison of prototypes.

Figure 24. Appropriateness of different types of prototypes for different purposes

(Ulrich and Eppinger, 2012).

Figure above shows that focused analytical prototypes are more appropriate for a learning goal, whereas in other cases they are less appropriate than physical. Moreover, focused physical prototypes are more appropriate for learning, communication and demonstration. However, it is important to remember that focused prototypes represent only one or a few features of the product. Hence, it is evident that only comprehensive physical prototypes are well suited for integration and scheduling.

Another way to compare prototypes with each other is by comparing their fidelity. Ac- cording to Preece et al. (2002), fidelity of prototypes shows how close a prototype is to the final product. Hence, a high-fidelity prototype looks like a final product and has most or all the features of the final product. On the other hand, a low-fidelity prototype is a very simple model of a product and is usually made quickly using cheap materials. This classification is quite similar to focused and comprehensive prototypes. However, the important difference is that focused prototypes could be low-fidelity and high-fidelity. Table below provides comparison between low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes.

Table 9. Comparison between low and high-fidelity prototypes (Modified from Preece et al., 2002).

TYPE ADVANTAGES DISADVANTAGES

Low-fidelity prototypes

• Low development cost • Useful communication

device

• Proof of concept • Easy and fast to make

• Limited error checking • Limited options of the

product

• Requires many assump- tions

High-fidelity prototypes

• Full functionality of the product

• Similar design

• Could be presented to customers

• Quite expensive • Inefficient for proof of

concept

Table 9 shows that low-fidelity prototypes are better for proving concepts and communi- cation. On the other hand, high-fidelity prototypes are more appropriate for presenting products for important stakeholders. High-fidelity prototypes are much more expensive. Hence, it takes too much resources to make two or three different high-fidelity prototypes to show some different ideas whereas low-fidelity prototypes perfectly suit this purpose. Thus, it is possible to improve taxonomy of physical and analytical prototypes by addict- ing there a low-fidelity and high-fidelity scale. Figure 25 shows classification of physical and analytical prototypes.

Figure above shows that experimental prototypes are usually have low-fidelity since it is a cheap simple imitation of a product. On the contrary, pre-production prototypes have the highest fidelity since they are basically the final products. Thus, the all degrees and purposes of prototypes have been discussed.