Revisiting tangible speculation: 20 years of UI prototyping

i n t e r a c t i o n s / j a n u a r y + f e b r u a r y 2 0 0 6 Over 20 years ago Dr. James Wilson and I drafted " Rapid Prototyping for User Interface Design, " one of many landmark chapters in the first Handbook of Human Computer Interaction [1]. Our approach was based on pioneering work taking place at the human factors laboratory of Eastman Kodak, where we were both staff members. No single individual can claim invention of this approach, as the original chapter bibliography demonstrates. There was much co-invention and simultaneous discovery during these early days in the emergence of HCI as a unique field. What Jim and I did have, in hindsight, was the opportunity to perform a complete survey of the field in the mid-1980s, as well as highlight our own approach to UI prototyping. We also presented workshops on this topic at many conferences for over a decade, including several CHI conferences, HFES, and several mainstream computer science conference series. Our approach was a natural outgrowth of the human factors labs incorporation within Eastman Kodak's industrial design department. Within this department we were surrounded by physical product models of various scales and fidelity on a daily basis. It seemed natural to carry this design tradition into the world of software as our jobs evolved from designing hard control panels for photocopiers to soft ones implemented on simple CRTs. In addition the notions of iterative design and user testing were also part of the departmental culture. Kodak's Human Factors team was famous for its Christmas tree lab, probably the first usability lab used for testing consumer products. Test participants were brought into this lab to evaluate new camera designs. Each experiment started by selecting a gift-wrapped box from under the tree in a simulated living room environment. This special edition of <i n t e r a c t i o n s> provides a welcome opportunity to see how far we have come in two decades and also evaluate which of our original goals have not yet been achieved. The original handbook chapter was introduced with a quote from the architect Robert Graves calling all prototypes and models a form of tangible speculation [2]. After 20 years this remains true. Building prototypes remains the lingua franca of all design …