Interactive Tool

The Tool highlights different types of prototypes for different aims within the same research.

The interactive Tool aims to highlight possible relations between the research and the prototype’s characteristics. The Tool does not measure any feature or generate quantitative data. It is designed to support our understating of the phenomena and elicit discussion with others.

The tool presents a cartesian area (inside the orange square called “research”) where Y-axis identifies the “general aim of phase of the research” in which the prototype is used and the X-axis identifies the “essence of the phase of the research in which the prototype is used”. In this area, we placed a set of dots representing the different kind of prototypes used in each case study. So, each dot represents one or more prototype that had the same aim during a certain phase of the research.
The list of the case studies is on the left side of this area. A data sheet is available by clicking on them.
Each dot connects to the aims and nature of the prototype. So that it is possible to select one aim, for instance, “assess,” and find out which dot appears. That means that in such research phase the prototypes were made/used to “assess” the design project. Also, it is possible to select “digital,” for instance, and discover which research used digital prototypes.