Concept Selection - Concept Selection Matrix - Concept Scoring Matrix - Prototyping - Focused vs. Comprehensive, Analytical vs. Physical Prototypes - What are Prototypes Used For? - Building Stuff - Scoop Example, Making Prototypes - Scoop Example, Testing Prototypes - Drawing with Emphasis and Detail - Modeling Tricks and Techniques

Concept Selection:

But it's now time to get serious. That is it's time to apply logic and analysis in order to select a plan. In this section a left-brain method called the Concept Selection Matrix is explained.

Desirable characteristics for any selection method:

1. The first motive or the first desirable characteristic of selection method is that you get the right answer. 
   Now, if you are designing something for yourself. That's not so hard. You just pick the solution concept that you like the best. But when you are designing for a large group of users, knowing which concept will best close the gap is often not so intuitive.
2. It can communicate the logic behind the decision
3. Its self documenting

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The Concept Selection Matrix:

The concept selection matrix is a tool that lets us take a set of concepts, for instance, these ten that we generated for the ice cream scoop example, and evaluate them in a way that we can narrow the set of alternatives to a relatively few, that we could expand on and evaluate further.

What objections or concerns arise in your mind about using the concept selection matrix approach to selecting a plan?

The more left-brain among you, have at least two objections or concerns about this method. The first is, you say, well, wait a second, this implies that all of these criteria are equally important. What if I decide that having the nice shape to the ball is not nearly as important as having it be quick and easy. Wouldn't it make sense to somehow weight the quick and easy greater than the nice shaped ball? And the answer is, absolutely. 

Those of you who are more right-brain have two objections yourselves. The first is that, hey, wait a second. We can't really reduce everything in life to a quantitative evaluation and I'd really like to make a more holistic judgement of the qualities of these concept.

I think it's good discipline to see if you can get the concept selection matrix to be consistent with your intuition then it's a nice way of codifying what it is that you're intuition is telling you. And that will serve well to document your results and to communicate to others.

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Concept Scoring Matrix:

And the scoring matrix is essentially a simple version of what's called multi-attribute utility analysis.

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Prototyping:
An approximation of the artifact on one or more dimensions of interest. 

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Focused vs. Comprehensive, Analytical vs. Physical Prototypes:

We've defined prototype as an approximation of an artifact on one or more dimensions of interest and that last bit of that phrase, One or more dimensions of interest, suggests that a prototype need not necessarily approximate the artifact on all it's dimensions. And in fact, it's useful to think about. Two extremes. At one extreme Prototype can be very focused on one or a few dimensions of interest at the other extreme, they can be comprehensive and that is, essentially capture most or all of the aspects or dimensions of the artifact. Focused, physical design:

Analytical prototype:

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What are Prototypes Used For?
There are three main purposes we built prototypes, 

• To answer questions
• To communicate
• To serve as milestones in the design process

There are usually two main questions that you're trying to answer in design. The first question is a question about the solution. It's basically, will it work? And the second is a question about the need. And that is really, will the users like it?

An Analytical prototype for communication purpose:

A new revision and refinement of the prototype according to the user needs.

Final product:

Third motive for building prototypes is for use as milestones to manage the project (from concept to production). Now most of you have heard of a beta prototype. Google is famously known for, for identifying their products as beta or in beta even well into their  adoption. Google Gmail was considered in beta even after it had ten of millions of users. That word is an example of a, It's a label that's used on prototypes that are used as milestones.

The typical labels used on a prototype are proof of concept, prototype, alpha prototype, beta prototype and pre-production prototype. Those are typical labels used. And often as consumers we just hear beta because beta is the first version that's typically made public or shown to a large group of users.

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Scoop Example, Making Prototypes:

 

 

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Drawing with Emphasis and Detail (Visual Expression):

Line Weight:

Contour lines:

 2D sketch:

3D sketch:

Outlining and shading techniques: