Comparing Clickable and Functional Prototypes for Augmented Reality Software Development in Intralogistics Processes

Human-Centered Design (HCD) significantly benefits organizations and end-users by emphasizing user needs, usability, and iterative feedback. However, HCD processes can be costly and time-consuming, especially the evaluation phase involving multiple prototypes. Additionally, emerging technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR) often require specialized expertise for development, which may not always be readily available. This paper examines whether user studies using simplified, interactive clickable prototypes can provide qualitative and quantitative insights comparable to those obtained with functional prototypes in an intralogistics context. We conducted a user study of an AR assistance system supporting intralogistics tasks such as goods receipt and shipping: One group interacted with a functional prototype, while a second group used a Figma-based high-fidelity clickable prototype simulating the same functionality and UI. Results show that clickable prototypes constitute an efficient alternative for evaluating novel technologies and comparing different design variants for qualitative but not for quantitative user research. Both prototypes investigated yield comparable system usability (SUS) and workload (NASA-TLX) scores. However, task completion times tended to be higher for the functional prototype.