PROTOTYPING – A “TESTER” PERSPECTIVE
Hernan Gouet
May 28, 2010
The world looks quite different from a “designer” and a “prototype-tester” perspective, that is “prototypes” look quite different and with different meanings depending from what side they are being looked at. That’s the impression left after some testing.
It was a life-transforming experience, seriously, at least in the realm of designing, prototyping and testing world.
The experience went something like this: You’re suddenly in front of a prototype, which is surrounded by their creators, some observing, some playing a role. Very fast, almost at a first glance you have a “gut feeling” about if ”it works” or “it doesn’t work”–almost as in a first date. After the first general look, you pay attention to what calls your attention most in trying to understand “what it is and how it works”, without asking. As gaps are found you start making questions, and although some are due to “your” lack of observation (and lack of prototype’s clarity) you are suddenly pretty surprised as how something that is very obvious for you to ask raises the designers’ brows, they look at each other and take notes, sometimes happily nodding, sometimes with lasting raised eyebrows and a nodding with a reluctant component.
You advance through the prototype, some surprises are great because you have never thought about it, others are of the sort of “why this?” Following instructions and making questions the testing finishes. Besides becoming an ordinary person again (the deep attention on you, your reactions, and your opinions vanished), you leave with a feeling of having understanding something “more” than the designers, and THAT was a strange feeling: How can you feel something like that in a couple of minutes from work that smart and hardworking people spent hours or days creating it…?
SOME INSIGHTS
I would say that there’s a reason for the feeling and an insight for our “designer” perspective.
One main reason I believe may come from the simplicity of a common experience’s prototypes (even if overloaded by features), and because of the “non-attachment” to them. In a sense, using a Buddhist metaphor we could say that we designers are “trapped in a web of karmas and delusions” while testers are already “enlightened.” In short, not being attached to a prototype allows you to be much more “objective” than being attached to it. And it allows you to think more clearly—and to see, hear, and sense more, and better.
Some insights from the experience are:
1. The most important objective of a prototype is to test some features, ideally one at a time, in the simplest and most obvious way possible.
2. Any over-designing and over-crafting are truly not needed, they confuse and for the tester it’s amazingly evident! It’s as if you have just swallowed an “awareness pill.”
3. It is “humbling” because it makes you realize how much time is spent in ideation and prototyping instead of starting by making the most basic prototype with just one or two features, walk outside and test it with whoever is passing by. Then iterate and improve.
4. It is humbling because some of your comments (as a tester) which you may believe are the most obvious ones, to the point of not being worth of mentioning them often create waves and oohs and aahs, even an Aha! in the designing team–that’s PRETTY humbling because you remember that it happened to you. And you know that it will happen to you again, and again.
5. A prototype needs to be simple and clear, simple and clear, simple and clear, with difficulty and challenge lying in designing the “testing objectives” not thinking in the future product in detail (unless the design absolutely requires it).
6. A prototype can be “almost anything,” a device, a person, an experience, and whatever it is, it should be able to generate the right (for your purposes) almost instinctual first impact, which most probably will frame, mark, and bias the whole tester’s experience–and the feedback.
