Mocking Up!

Simon Bowen, February 2015

Our plan for this morning!

•  Learning Aim:

To understand what mocking-up is, when it can be useful in

design, and how to apply it.

•  Group work (method taster)

•  Collective discussion

•  Summary at the end

•  Break around 11am

Introducing me!

www.simon-bowen.com

Introducing you!

•  Your practical expertise

•  Your research interests

Setting the scene: Design is…!

•  Relevant and transformative

•  Tradition and transcendence

(Ehn, 1988)

So, as designers/researchers: !

•  Why don’t we just talk to people?

•  Why don’t we just observe people?

•  Why don’t we just build and test?

Example 1: The UTOPIA project!

Cardboard Computers!

“hands  on  the  future  as  opposed  to  eyes  on  a  system  descrip3on”    

Group task:!

•  What were the important characteristics of mock-ups?

•  And how were they used? (by designers, by participants)

Mocking-up = Prototyping?!

Prototypes (Houde & Hill, 1997) (and SB):

•  Role (‘behaves like’, function)

•  Implementation (‘works like’, technology)

•  Look and feel (‘looks like, feels like’, experience)

Prototyping (Floyd, 1984):

•  For exploration (clarifying features, requirements)

•  For experimentation (determining adequacy, testing)

•  For evolution (adapting to changing requirements in use)

Taster (part 1)!

•  Choose an activity of interest where technology could have an impact. (Your project, another idea, something we can try out this morning)

•  Construct some mock-ups for a digitally-supported

version of this activity

•  (We’re going to try them out, later…)

Grab a coffee…!

Re-cap: Mocking up!

•  ‘Act out’ familiar activities and explore implications of technological intervention

•  Activities similar to existing practices (language-games - Wittgenstein)

•  Mock-ups understandable as not the real thing – placeholders

•  Designing for use more than form 

•  ‘Break downs’ (stop ‘acting out’ and focus on mock-ups) direct design work (from ready-to-hand to present-at-hand – Heidegger)

From Low to High Fidelity!

•  E.g. UTOPIA simulating high-resolution displays

•  Losing the ‘understandability’ of mock-ups132

From Low to High Fidelity!

•  Where are today’s technological revolutions?

•  How do we mock these

up?...

•  http://youtu.be/

YWyCCJ6B2WE

Example 2: Whose Diabetes is it?!

www.esendex.co.uk    

Example 3: Dear Santa App!

Taster (part 2)!

•  How might you simulate some of the technological interactivity?

•  (Do it if practical in the time)

Trying it out…!

5 minutes/group:

•  Explain your context/activity

•  Get volunteer(s)

•  ‘Act out’ with mock-ups

Think about:

What went well/not so well, challenges, opportunities

Mocking up: Benefits and Limitations!

Mocking Up - Summary (1 of 2)!

•  Balancing relevance and transformation (tradition and transcendence)

•  How to involve people in decisions about technology

when technology can be hard to understand?

•  About designing to support activity through use, not

abstract evaluation

•  Mock-ups to ‘act out’ activities

Mocking Up - Summary (2 of 2)!

•  Mock-ups need to be understandable as not real thing

•  Activities using mock ups should be familiar

•  Break downs useful points to reflect on design

•  High resolution can mean less understandable

•  ‘Wizard of Oz’ – simulate, don’t build!

•  Better suited to collective, social activities and

incremental innovation?

Further reading!

Ehn, P. (1988). Work-Oriented Design of Computer Artifacts (p. 496). Stockholm: Arbetslivescentrum. Retrieved from http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:580037/FULLTEXT02

-  Discussions of participatory design via the lens of Heidegger (Chapter 2) Wittgenstein’s language-games (Chapter 4).

Floyd, C. (1984). A systematic look at prototyping. In R. Budde, K. Kuhlenkamp, L. Mathiassen, & H. Züllighoven (Eds.), Approaches to Prototyping (pp. 1–18). London: Springer Verlag. Retrieved from http://www.daimi.au.dk/DIS/materialer/Floyd_Systematic.pdf 

Houde, S., & Hill, C. (1997). What do Prototypes Prototype? In M. G. Helander, T. K. Landauer, & P. V Prabhu (Eds.), Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction (Vol. 2, pp. 367–381). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier Science B.V.