A Systematic Method for Design Prototyping

Kevin Otto

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

93 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Scientific evaluation of prototyping practices is an emerging field in design research. Prototyping is critical to the success of product development efforts, and yet its implementation in practice is often guided by ad hoc experience. To address this need, we seek to advance the study and development of prototyping principles, techniques, and tools. A method to repeatedly enhance the outcome of prototyping efforts is reported in this paper. The research methodology to develop this method is as follows: (1) systematically identify practices that improve prototyping; (2) synthesize these practices to form a guiding method for designers; and (3) validate that the proposed method encourages best practices and improves performance. Prototyping practices are represented as six key heuristics to guide a designer in planning: how many iterations to pursue, how many unique design concepts to explore in parallel, as well as the use of scaled prototypes, isolated subsystem prototypes, relaxed requirements, and virtual prototypes. The method is correlated, through experimental investigation, with increased application of these best practices and improved design performance outcomes. These observations hold across various design problems studied. This method is novel in providing a systematic approach to prototyping.

Original languageEnglish
Article number081102
JournalJournal of Mechanical Design
Volume137
Issue number8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Aug 2015
MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

Keywords

  • PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
  • RAPID PROTOTYPES

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