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Prototyping Canvas: Design Tool for Planning Purposeful Prototypes

Part of: Design Methods and Tools

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2019

Carlye Lauff ,
Jessica Menold  and
Kristin L. Wood
Carlye Lauff*
Affiliation:
SUTD-MIT International Design Centre;
Jessica Menold
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University
Kristin L. Wood
Affiliation:
SUTD-MIT International Design Centre;
*
Contact: Lauff, Carlye Anne, SUTD-MIT, International Design Centre, Singapore, carlye_lauff@sutd.edu.sg

Abstract

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While prototypes are critical to the creation of successful products and innovative solutions, building a prototype is characterized by large sunk costs and a plethora of unknowns. The versatility and effectiveness of prototypes paired with the ambiguous nature of developing a prototype can lead to wasted resources. Recent studies support this claim, demonstrating that under certain circumstances, designers often prototype without a clear purpose, building prototypes as a function of the design process rather than as a function of the design. These findings motivated the creation of the Prototyping Canvas, a tool to aid designers in planning for purposeful prototypes by identifying critical assumptions and questions to guide development. Business and engineering design literature influenced the development of the canvas, which was first tested with a client project in the SUTD-MIT International Design Centre (IDC). The feedback and insights from the design team guided revisions to the canvas. The updated canvas was then validated with 55 professionals during a design project sprint. The purpose of this paper is to present the Prototyping Canvas as a valid and effective design tool.

Keywords

Design methodsPrototypeDesign practiceNew product development
Type
Article
Information
Proceedings of the Design Society: International Conference on Engineering Design , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , July 2019 , pp. 1563 - 1572
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2019

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