Prototypes have different forms. According to an article written by two apple computer employees, Houde and Hill (1997), prototypes prototype the “role” of a product, its “look and feel,” or its “implementation.” Therefore, designers should choose a right type of a prototype.

One step further, prototypes serve different roles. When I visited IDEO last summer, I found three boards which describe what prototypes do; they “inspire,” “experiment (evolve),” or “validate (specify)” a product. This suggests that different types of prototypes can serve different purposes for a product.

Given that there are different types of prototypes and different objectives of prototypes, designers should create different types of prototypes for different objectives. For instance, the “role” prototype can be more appropriate when designers inspire a product, while the “look and feel” prototype can be better when designers validate a product.

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Reference

Houde, S., & Hill, C. (1997). What do prototypes prototype?. In Handbook of human-computer interaction (pp. 367-381). North-Holland.

Prototypes are widely recognized to be a core means of exploring and expressing designs for interactive computer artifacts. It is common practice to build prototypes in order to represent different states of an evolving design, and to explore options. How- ever, since interactive systems are complex, it may be difficult or impossible to create prototypes of a whole design in the formative stages of a project. Choosing the right kind of more focused prototype to build is an art in itself, and communicating its limited purposes to its various audiences is a critical aspect of its use.