Characterising the Affordances and Limitations of Common Prototyping Techniques to Support the Early Stages of Product Development

The act of prototyping is more than the artefact produced – the process helps answer design questions. A knowledge of prototyping activities leads to better decisions in the design process. The aim of this paper is to characterise and compare prototyping techniques. A literature review explores current research into characterising prototypes, before highlighting the need for comparison. A study is reported that compares the design activity of sketching, CAD, cardboard and LEGO when used as prototypes in a group design task, showing differences in the levels of different design activities.