- The digital prototyping section is a complement to traditional hands-on prototyping.
- Digital prototyping involves creating prototypes that can be tested and evaluated in a digital or online format.
- It is used when physical prototypes are not feasible or appropriate, or when there are limitations in time and resources.
- Digital prototyping focuses on exploratory style prototyping and emphasizes iterations, learning, and testing.
- Examples of digital prototyping include creating a website prototype and video prototyping.
- The process involves selecting a problem, brainstorming solutions, developing a scenario, shooting and editing a video, and gathering feedback.
- App mock-up tools and PowerPoint can be used for more advanced digital prototyping.
- PowerPoint is a versatile tool for creating prototypes, including interfaces and games.

- The video discusses different types of digital prototyping tools
- One tool mentioned is a common tool that can be easily shared and executed on another computer
- There are also prototyping tools for creating apps and software prototypes without coding
- Block programming interfaces are used to implement logic in these prototypes
- Virtual worlds prototyping allows for creating interactive online environments for testing and gathering feedback
- Augmented reality and virtual reality prototyping are also mentioned as ways to create prototypes and gather feedback
- The video concludes by summarizing the different types of digital prototyping tools discussed.

Christian Johansson Askling presents the Digital Prototyping topic in the Prototyping and Ideation segment of the Design Thinking Course at Blekinge Institute of Technology.

Timeline of the lecture:
0:00 - Intro

This is a section on digital prototyping, which is a complementary to the more classic hands-on prototyping.

By digital prototyping we also mean specific solutions for creating prototypes that can be tested and evaluated and learned from in digital format and even online formats.

Here today we will talk a little bit about what we mean about going digital.

We will talk about contrasting the maybe classical version of virtual prototyping with the design thinking style digital prototyping here and we will also show a few examples and some thoughts on how and what type of prototypes that can be created.

Starting out talking about going digital here we are interested in doing prototyping when we can't or we won't be able to make traditional physical prototypes.

So we here talk in terms of both when there are limitations and maybe sometimes there's a specific choice for why we would like to do a digital style prototype.

So here we are talking about when we are making a digital product for instance and a physical mock-up might not be appropriate or applicable to do.

It's just important here to also state that sometimes we want to make a physical mock-up even though we won't end up with a final digital solution and that could be in terms of speed, expedience and also other types of experimental considerations to make to go with more of a body storming type prototype.

It's also interesting when we might be limited in time and resources from building the real thing, Maybe it's too much of a hassle to make the real thing.

It could be a resource limitation, so we don't want to spend the money and the effort on building something physical because it's just too much work to do.

It can be when testing in person might be unfeasible or inappropriate to do.

So some reasons why we might consider going digital instead of being hands-on physical.

To begin with as well I want to contrast what we mean by digital prototyping towards maybe the classic way of virtual prototyping, which is the more CAD model simulation driven type of prototyping, where we focus on doing digital evaluations and simulations, Quite high fidelity still, even though it's in a digital world.

We might be various testing in FEM and crash testing and other types of evaluations, which is quite tedious and time consuming.

Here we are interested in maybe the more faster bits.

So here it's about with virtual prototyping, we talk about evaluating engineering characteristics, but we are here looking more into exploratory style prototyping.

We're talking about in design thinking, we still want to make sure that we are working with early stage explorative prototyping using various types of digital tools and framework as opposed to maybe the physical from cardboard and onwards type solutions.

It's still an emphasis on iterations, learning, testing etc.

So we still want to kind of keep it relatively low fidelity, clean, testing with users.

We don't really spend too much effort into this.

We might explore stuff, we are gonna fail and so on.

So that's still gonna be the ethos and the thing is that we want to do just enough to meet our objectives.

We don't want to overspend here as well which can be easily done as well even in the digital world.

An example which I think we've shown as well is this Groupon example of an MVP where basically creating a website You can create a prototype of a system with a lot of hands-on work in the back end.

You still can get the user to experience and feel the solutions in work in order to gather feedback, in order to get an understanding of feasibility and attract interest, but with relatively small efforts.

An interesting 1 is the video prototyping, bringing life into a scenario and a project and creating a video which explains the scenario, explaining the context, giving the feeling for the narrative and the experience of using the final solutions and getting more living and visually there than with a storyboard.

Various levels of fidelity and production quality is possible from just doing fast videos on a smartphone to doing a lot of post-production as well, of course.

But you can quite quickly do an immersive experience here with a relatively little effort, which is what we are interested in.

It's good to add life here, basically, to the scenario.

You can fake a lot and use smoke and mirrors to convey the experience and gather feedback, get feedback on are we on the right track and of course if we move on then it's higher quality video prototypes going on.

So select problem situation, start from a how might we question is always good.

Think here that you can fake a lot, especially the specific prototypes.

Use previous prototypes and previous iterations as a starting point, and develop a scenario.

So here we're quite close also to the storyboard, but what are the interactions that we want to convey?

What are the important shots that we want to do basically?

And build from that and try to fill in the gaps so it's looking like a final thing basically.

Decide here then of course based on that scenario what kind of shots are interesting, what would be the the frames in a storyboard for this?

Craft that and start to make those sketches and figure out the most important ones to capture that.

Figure out where should it be shot, what kind of props, who should be the actors.

Of course Usually the team would probably play the actors and figure out something that gives a feel for the real deal But it doesn't have to be the real deal in any sense of the world.

Good to rehearse the scenario a little bit and use a video camera, smartphone, whatever Usually with modern technologies, that's the easy bit.

And then edit the video using iMovie, other movie makers or something like that, create titles, voiceover if you need a narrative etc.

You need sound effects and that's the next as well of course.

Make sure that you highlight what you want to get across and get feedback on.

If we are looking at various solutions such as apps for cell phones etc smartphone apps first step on that development would be to create sketches, wireframes, early stage concepts where we have a general idea, doesn't have to be any real graphical software elements and implementations, should be quite quick, should be possible to change quite a lot.

It's a fast way to explore ideas and contents which would work, which wouldn't work, that we want to discard etc.

It can be used either pen and paper, post-its is quite good just to flip 1 post-it to the next and sketch a flow of frames but there are also specific apps for this as well.

Important to note that this is the first stage and it's not an endgame.

Next step on the work on Fidelity is more the app mock-up tools.

Usually there are specific softwares can also be done using PowerPoint of course.

Very popular in user interface design, UX design, where you can create more living frames, even flows, you can add activities and clicks and going from 1 frame to the next and getting the feeling for the solution.

It's a visual representation, can add as I said logic to this with transitions etc.

Even as we said PowerPoint being a good tool specifically here as well it's not an end game it's quite easy to make it feel like it's real but you don't really need to take any type of responsibility for specific functions So here a lot of stuff works and the trade-offs aren't really exposed here.

So it's not an engineering solution yet I would say.

It's more a design solution and that's important to state that we need to keep going onwards from that 1.

Spoke about PowerPoint being a good prototyping tool.

It's a kind of a joker tool for a lot of type of solutions.

Can be for interfaces, can also be for creating as we have here in the picture, an escape room and a game basically where you solve various types of problems etc.

By using various hyperlinks in PowerPoint, using flows and shifts and going back and forth in sequences you can create a logic with relatively simple tools.

The benefit as well of course here is that it's a very common tool for people so you can send it to someone else and they can run through the show and you can even package it as a slideshow so you can just execute it on another computer as well.

So it's a very fast easy way and it lends itself positively to testing.

Then when we get to the more real stuff, there are actually prototyping tools for creating various apps, digital solutions, software prototypes without having to spend any or very little effort on actually doing coding and stuff.

So these are the type of app prototyping tools.

An example of that is the MIT App Inventor which we have here on a slide and there are other ones as well.

Even it's possible to go towards more app stores as well.

So it's a solution to create these types of apps, both mobile real apps in software and for computers and the logic is implemented using these types of block programming interfaces which you see here.

You can create a logic of things that happens when you press a button or when you speak to the app or something like that.

It's primarily working on Android and PCs, but also in the Apple ecosystem we start to see prototypes coming.

They are quite locked down normally, but it's getting there slowly and I think that's going to develop further.

Even possible to do similar things on Raspberry Pis where you can even implement sensors on the Raspberry Pi and then of course add that type of functionality creating dashboards creating programs quite easily and even tapping into sensors.

Another 1 it's something I call the virtual worlds prototyping so there are a few tools on this like Second Life is 1 that's been around for quite some time another 1 is called Mozilla Hubs and the idea here is that you can create a world where you can interact online with users So you can basically create a meeting place and create solutions where you can prototype interactions and test that type of interactions.

Even conveying other types of prototypes in this type of world and gather feedback.

So it's a way of exploring things and building a habitat before you actually do it for real.

Ups and downs, positive, negatives, but definitely an interesting 1 to explore and I think it's a lot down to imagination what you would implement.

Again, answer early fitness for purpose questions.

Another 1 is the augmented reality style prototyping, so using augmented reality apps and goggles and stuff like that to create prototypes where you can do both low and high fidelity and create various types of prototypes of interfaces or even put CAD models in the real world, so to speak.

Finally also virtual reality prototyping where you can both work and export CAD models and go around CAD models in the virtual world.

You can film videos using 360 cameras to create the experience of being in the room with the situation that you want to convey.

So use basically various types of VR headsets to immerse the user in an experience where you can explore a product or a situation and gather feedback and get support, get understanding based on that type of testing.

And that wraps up this section on the more digital prototyping.


Speaker 0: What is the digital prototyping section?

Speaker 1: This is a section on digital prototyping, which is a complementary to the more classic hands-on prototyping. By digital prototyping we also mean specific solutions for creating prototypes that can be tested and evaluated and learned from in digital format and even online formats. Here today we will talk a little bit about what we mean about going digital. We will talk about contrasting the maybe classical version of virtual prototyping with the design thinking style digital prototyping here and we will also show a few examples and some thoughts on how and what type of prototypes that can be created. Starting out talking about going digital here we are interested in doing prototyping when we can't or we won't be able to make traditional physical prototypes.

So we here talk in terms of both when there are limitations and maybe sometimes there's a specific choice for why we would like to do a digital style prototype. So here we are talking about when we are making a digital product for instance and a physical mock-up might not be appropriate or applicable to do. It's just important here to also state that sometimes we want to make a physical mock-up even though we won't end up with a final digital solution and that could be in terms of speed, expedience and also other types of experimental considerations to make to go with more of a body storming type prototype. It's also interesting when we might be limited in time and resources from building the real thing, Maybe it's too much of a hassle to make the real thing. It could be a resource limitation, so we don't want to spend the money and the effort on building something physical because it's just too much work to do.

It can be when testing in person might be unfeasible or inappropriate to do. So some reasons why we might consider going digital instead of being hands-on physical. To begin with as well I want to contrast what we mean by digital prototyping towards maybe the classic way of virtual prototyping, which is the more CAD model simulation driven type of prototyping, where we focus on doing digital evaluations and simulations, Quite high fidelity still, even though it's in a digital world. We might be various testing in FEM and crash testing and other types of evaluations, which is quite tedious and time consuming. Here we are interested in maybe the more faster bits.

So here it's about with virtual prototyping, we talk about evaluating engineering characteristics, but we are here looking more into exploratory style prototyping. We're talking about in design thinking, we still want to make sure that we are working with early stage explorative prototyping using various types of digital tools and framework as opposed to maybe the physical from cardboard and onwards type solutions. It's still an emphasis on iterations, learning, testing etc. So we still want to kind of keep it relatively low fidelity, clean, testing with users. We don't really spend too much effort into this.

We might explore stuff, we are gonna fail and so on. So that's still gonna be the ethos and the thing is that we want to do just enough to meet our objectives. We don't want to overspend here as well which can be easily done as well even in the digital world. An example which I think we've shown as well is this Groupon example of an MVP where basically creating a website You can create a prototype of a system with a lot of hands-on work in the back end. You still can get the user to experience and feel the solutions in work in order to gather feedback, in order to get an understanding of feasibility and attract interest, but with relatively small efforts.

An interesting 1 is the video prototyping, bringing life into a scenario and a project and creating a video which explains the scenario, explaining the context, giving the feeling for the narrative and the experience of using the final solutions and getting more living and visually there than with a storyboard. Various levels of fidelity and production quality is possible from just doing fast videos on a smartphone to doing a lot of post-production as well, of course. But you can quite quickly do an immersive experience here with a relatively little effort, which is what we are interested in. It's good to add life here, basically, to the scenario. It's in explorative stages.

We can fake solutions, artifacts, etc. It doesn't really have to work. You can fake a lot and use smoke and mirrors to convey the experience and gather feedback, get feedback on are we on the right track and of course if we move on then it's higher quality video prototypes going on. So some thoughts on how to do it. So select problem situation, start from a how might we question is always good.

Brainstorm various solutions. Think here that you can fake a lot, especially the specific prototypes. Use previous prototypes and previous iterations as a starting point, and develop a scenario. So here we're quite close also to the storyboard, but what are the interactions that we want to convey? What are the touch points?

What are the important shots that we want to do basically? And build from that and try to fill in the gaps so it's looking like a final thing basically. Maintain a focus on the essential bits. Decide here then of course based on that scenario what kind of shots are interesting, what would be the the frames in a storyboard for this? Craft that and start to make those sketches and figure out the most important ones to capture that.

Figure out where should it be shot, what kind of props, who should be the actors. Of course Usually the team would probably play the actors and figure out something that gives a feel for the real deal But it doesn't have to be the real deal in any sense of the world. Shoot the video. Good to rehearse the scenario a little bit and use a video camera, smartphone, whatever Usually with modern technologies, that's the easy bit. And then edit the video using iMovie, other movie makers or something like that, create titles, voiceover if you need a narrative etc.

You need sound effects and that's the next as well of course. Make sure that you highlight what you want to get across and get feedback on. If we are looking at various solutions such as apps for cell phones etc smartphone apps first step on that development would be to create sketches, wireframes, early stage concepts where we have a general idea, doesn't have to be any real graphical software elements and implementations, should be quite quick, should be possible to change quite a lot. It's a fast way to explore ideas and contents which would work, which wouldn't work, that we want to discard etc. Avoiding spending too much time on this.

It can be used either pen and paper, post-its is quite good just to flip 1 post-it to the next and sketch a flow of frames but there are also specific apps for this as well. Important to note that this is the first stage and it's not an endgame. Next step on the work on Fidelity is more the app mock-up tools. Usually there are specific softwares can also be done using PowerPoint of course. Very popular in user interface design, UX design, where you can create more living frames, even flows, you can add activities and clicks and going from 1 frame to the next and getting the feeling for the solution.

It's a visual representation, can add as I said logic to this with transitions etc. Even as we said PowerPoint being a good tool specifically here as well it's not an end game it's quite easy to make it feel like it's real but you don't really need to take any type of responsibility for specific functions So here a lot of stuff works and the trade-offs aren't really exposed here. So it's not an engineering solution yet I would say. It's more a design solution and that's important to state that we need to keep going onwards from that 1. Spoke about PowerPoint being a good prototyping tool.

It's possible to do quite a lot here. It's a kind of a joker tool for a lot of type of solutions. Can be for interfaces, can also be for creating as we have here in the picture, an escape room and a game basically where you solve various types of problems etc. By using various hyperlinks in PowerPoint, using flows and shifts and going back and forth in sequences you can create a logic with relatively simple tools. The benefit as well of course here is that it's a very common tool for people so you can send it to someone else and they can run through the show and you can even package it as a slideshow so you can just execute it on another computer as well.

So it's a very fast easy way and it lends itself positively to testing. Then when we get to the more real stuff, there are actually prototyping tools for creating various apps, digital solutions, software prototypes without having to spend any or very little effort on actually doing coding and stuff. So these are the type of app prototyping tools. An example of that is the MIT App Inventor which we have here on a slide and there are other ones as well. Even it's possible to go towards more app stores as well.

So it's a solution to create these types of apps, both mobile real apps in software and for computers and the logic is implemented using these types of block programming interfaces which you see here. You can create a logic of things that happens when you press a button or when you speak to the app or something like that. It's primarily working on Android and PCs, but also in the Apple ecosystem we start to see prototypes coming. They are quite locked down normally, but it's getting there slowly and I think that's going to develop further. Even possible to do similar things on Raspberry Pis where you can even implement sensors on the Raspberry Pi and then of course add that type of functionality creating dashboards creating programs quite easily and even tapping into sensors.

Another 1 it's something I call the virtual worlds prototyping so there are a few tools on this like Second Life is 1 that's been around for quite some time another 1 is called Mozilla Hubs and the idea here is that you can create a world where you can interact online with users So you can basically create a meeting place and create solutions where you can prototype interactions and test that type of interactions. Even conveying other types of prototypes in this type of world and gather feedback. So it's a way of exploring things and building a habitat before you actually do it for real. Ups and downs, positive, negatives, but definitely an interesting 1 to explore and I think it's a lot down to imagination what you would implement. Again, answer early fitness for purpose questions.

Another 1 is the augmented reality style prototyping, so using augmented reality apps and goggles and stuff like that to create prototypes where you can do both low and high fidelity and create various types of prototypes of interfaces or even put CAD models in the real world, so to speak. So an interesting 1 as well. Finally also virtual reality prototyping where you can both work and export CAD models and go around CAD models in the virtual world. You can film videos using 360 cameras to create the experience of being in the room with the situation that you want to convey. So use basically various types of VR headsets to immerse the user in an experience where you can explore a product or a situation and gather feedback and get support, get understanding based on that type of testing.

And that wraps up this section on the more digital prototyping.

See all Christian Johansson transcripts on Youtube

Design Thinking - Digital Prototyping - Lecture - BTH