Paper prototyping is a low-fidelity method of prototyping that can be quickly and inexpensively created, but often forces users to use their imagination when testing.

90 Minute Exercise

I worked with one other person to develop a prototype for a home thermostat unit. The unit needs to be programmable so that the thermostat is automatically set to different temperatures at different times of day. For example, the temperature can be lower when the user is at work, but should be a comfortable temperature in the morning when the user is waking up. We took inspiration from thermostats we used in the past, noticing that the easiest thermostats to use have been very tactile. Additionally, I had been playing Alien Isolation the night before and a lot of the technology in the game gives a sense of very physically slotting things together.

We decided on having 4 buttons on the left edge of the thermostat, one for each time period (morning, afternoon, evening, night). The user would press in one of these buttons, then press the “set” button on the face of the thermostat to set the time when the period starts, or the temperature for the time period. The user would then turn a textured wheel on the bottom of the thermostat to change the numbers on screen.

A1: Smart Watch

I worked on a wearable system that pairs with a mobile app. I developed a prototype for a smart watch where the user has access to four applications on top of the main screen of the watch which just has the time displayed. In the mobile app side of the system, the user would be able to set the four apps, and where the apps are “located”. I tried to have the structure of my paper prototype reflect the architecture of the smart watch side. The main mechanism is for the user to swipe in different directions from the home screen to reach the different apps.

In my user test, I told the user about this mechanism, and asked her to navigate around. Something interesting is that I had a “home” icon in the corner of the app, but the user didn’t notice it. My idea was that the user would navigate back to the home screen by pressing the icon, but she swiped to get back to the home screen instead. Overall, I think the user test was beneficial even though this was a fairly low-stakes project. This was my first time using the method of creating all the screens on a connected sheet of paper, then moving around a frame to show the change of what’s on the screen. The user test can be seen below.