THE BENEFITS OF PROTOTYPING EARLY IN DESIGN WORKSHOPS

Abstract

This paper chronicles and reflects upon the experiences gathered from a design workshop conducted at Chiba University, with students from Chiba University, Köln International School of Design and with the support of Fujitsu. During the workshop, participants were invited to continuously build and prototype their ideas, rather than following the conventional design process of idea generation, visualization and, only at a later stage, prototyping. Such a hands-on approach proved beneficial in the communication among participants as well as in simplifying the design process. In fact, by working on quick and approximate prototypes, participants could more easily express their ideas overcoming language barriers and visual representation skills. Furthermore, physical prototypes helped participants to identify the key aspects of their proposals and focus on those. Finally, those prototypes also served as useful props to enact the experience of using the proposed artefacts and services.