Design, Development, & Production
<------ Browse the methods to use during this stage of the design cycle |
After all of the planning and researching of the early stages, this is where you begin to see the fruits of your labor. This stage in the design cycle is defined by tangible products and rapid, iterative design, and it is often the stage in which human factors professionals will collaborate with engineers, graphic designers, and dedicated prototypers to help form a product from concept and validated idea to functional reality.
One way to effectively build from the work conducted in previous stages (and previous projects) is to refer to guidelines and standards. Guidelines serve as design rules, lessons learned, and best practices for which to design the forthcoming products, and are often developed specifically for each project, or type of project, or company. Standards, similar to guidelines, serve as rules and best practices but are usually enforced by a governing body with the intent of creating consistent, universal experiences across products, therefore reducing danger and minimizing extra learning. Using guidelines and standards as inputs,
Prototyping is an umbrella term for a wide variety of methods that produce tangible products upon which can be used for evaluative and iterative purposes. Prototypes are often thought of as bad-looking, cobbled-together parts that barely function and doesn't look anything like the final product. That's true, but its not the only kind of prototype. But there are many different fidelities of prototypes that most consumers rarely see, ranging from sketches all the way up to 3D printed models. This is true both for hardware and software, as websites and applications often move from wireframes to functional programs before they even start to look nice. Each of these early productions serve to improve the final product, and they are a critical part of getting the product just right.
One way to effectively build from the work conducted in previous stages (and previous projects) is to refer to guidelines and standards. Guidelines serve as design rules, lessons learned, and best practices for which to design the forthcoming products, and are often developed specifically for each project, or type of project, or company. Standards, similar to guidelines, serve as rules and best practices but are usually enforced by a governing body with the intent of creating consistent, universal experiences across products, therefore reducing danger and minimizing extra learning. Using guidelines and standards as inputs,
Prototyping is an umbrella term for a wide variety of methods that produce tangible products upon which can be used for evaluative and iterative purposes. Prototypes are often thought of as bad-looking, cobbled-together parts that barely function and doesn't look anything like the final product. That's true, but its not the only kind of prototype. But there are many different fidelities of prototypes that most consumers rarely see, ranging from sketches all the way up to 3D printed models. This is true both for hardware and software, as websites and applications often move from wireframes to functional programs before they even start to look nice. Each of these early productions serve to improve the final product, and they are a critical part of getting the product just right.