Breaking the fidelity barrier

Abstract

This paper presents a summary of the space of commonlyused HCI prototyping methods (low-fidelity to highfidelity) and asserts that with a better understanding of this space, HCI practitioners will be better equipped to direct scarce prototyping resources toward an effort likely to yield specific results. It presents a set of five dimensions along which prototypes can be planned and characterized. The paper then describes an analysis of this space performed by members of the NASA Ames Human-Computer Interaction Group when considering prototyping approaches for a new set of tools for Mars mission planning and scheduling tools. A description is presented of a prototype that demonstrates design solutions that would have been particularly difficult to test given conventional low-or mid-fidelity prototyping methods. The prototype created was "mixed-fidelity," that is, high-fidelity on some dimensions and low-fidelity on others. The prototype is compared to a preexisting tool being redesigned and to a tool that has been developed using the prototype. Experimental data are presented that show the prototype to be a good predictor of eventual user performance with the final application. Given the relative cost of developing prototypes, it is critical to better characterize the space of fidelity in order to more precisely allocate design and development resources.

Effects of Perceived Prototype Fidelity in Usability Testing under Different Conditions of Observer Presence

“…The main requirements for prototypes are low cost of production and sufficient similarity to the final product to reach valid test outcomes. Therefore, a very important characteristic of prototypes is their 'fidelity' to the final product, including aesthetic refinement, similarity of interaction and breadth of functions (McCurdy et al, 2006;Sauer et al, 2010;Virzi et al, 1996).…”

“…The tested prototypes can be very different from the final product with respect to various dimensions of their fidelity, and so can the respective test outcomes (e.g. a specific interaction pattern can only be tested if the prototype offers the required richness of interaction) (McCurdy et al, 2006;Virzi et al, 1996). However, how prototype fidelity is perceived by participants in a usability test can be very different even when 92 A.…”

A mobile tool for in-situ prototyping

“…In fact, it has been shown in [15] that the adopted prototyping technique can be determinant during the consequent evaluation stages, allowing users to freely interact with them, improve them and use them on realistic settings without being misled [6]. Furthermore, to evaluate different details that might be relevant at different stages of prototyping, the concept of mixed prototyping has emphasized the need to create different prototypes to evaluate different dimensions of usability [12]. On these aspects, prototyping tools can play a paramount role, allowing designers to maintain their sketching and writing practices while creating prototypes that can actually be executed, giving users a more tangible and realistic feel of the future application.…”

Planning and communicating prototype tests for the Nano Membrane Toilet: A critical review and proposed strategy

“…Prototypes can also be categorised by how closely they resemble the final product, i.e. their fidelity (Mccurdy et al, 2006). Another important distinction of different categories of prototypes is between virtual and physical prototypes, and while the use of virtual prototypes, or simulations, has increasingly gained importance in the past decades , this paper is focused on the testing of physical prototypes, as opposed to "the solution of analytical models and numerical approximations�� (Boës et al, 2017).…”