Requirement entry: Prototype Development

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• Horizontal and vertical prototypes
• Abandon or evolutionary prototype
• Openexpressapp's support for prototype

Why prototype?

The main reason for prototyping is to solve the problem of uncertainty in the early stages of product development, these uncertainties are used to determine which part of the system needs to be prototyped and what the user wants to evaluate the prototype. Prototype can make their imagination more concrete and help to describe and correct these uncertainties. In general, the prototype method can effectively reduce project risks.

Horizontal and vertical prototypes

We often talk to business people about horizontal prototypes, also known as behavioral prototype ). Explore specific behaviors of the expected system and refine the requirements. When users consider whether the features proposed in the prototype can enable them to complete their respective business tasks, the prototype makes the questions discussed by users more specific. It starts from business needs and is applied in the demand phase.

Vertical prototype is also called a proof of a structured prototype or concept. It implements some application functions. A vertical prototype can be developed when there may be technical risks in the expected implementation phase. Vertical prototypes are usually used to construct production tools in the production runtime environment to make the results clear (more meaningful ). Vertical prototypes are more often used in the software design phase to reduce risks than in the software demand development phase.

Abandon or evolutionary prototype

From the perspective of the prototype existence time, there are two types of prototype: abandon prototype and conduct prototype. Discard prototype is not part of the final product, but serves as an exploratory answer to some demand questions, refining the requirements and improving the quality of the demand. Since these prototypes will eventually be abandoned in the development phase, you do not need to make too much effort to build the prototype.

The evolutionary prototype provides a solid development foundation for developing progressive products with clearly defined requirements as part of the product implementation. Compared with the rapid and rough features of the abandoned prototype, the evolutionary model must be robust and product quality-level at the beginning.Code. Therefore, it takes more time to create an evolutionary prototype than to create a discarded prototype for describing the same function. An evolutionary prototype must be designed to be easy to upgrade and optimize. Therefore, you must pay attention to the design principles of software system and integrity. There is no shortcut to meet the quality requirements of evolutionary prototypes. Evolutionary prototypes are generally used in processing architectures.

Low-fidelity prototype and high-fidelity prototype

The prototype is divided into the basic and high-fidelity prototype. The basic type aims to express the main content of the work and reflect static elements without dynamic interaction. The goal of a high-fidelity prototype is to make a product similar to that of the product after the product is launched, including both static interfaces and interactions, some even include data storage and logic verification. If the customer needs to see the same prototype as the actual product before development, a high-fidelity prototype is required, A low fidelity prototype can be created.

 

Prototype tools

the importance of requirements in product development is no longer controversial. There are many requirements and methods. one of the most common methods in the industry is to express requirements through prototypes and use cases. The business staff can understand the creation of prototypes to express the business more quickly and clearly, and communicate with customers and developers more intuitively, making it easier for everyone to understand. However, there are many prototype tools, such as Excel , access , Delphi , PowerPoint, axure, balsamiq mockups, foreui, irise, lucid spec, mockup screens, pencer, Serena , and even the development tool Yaqi can also be used as a prototype.. To do this, you must first sharpen the tool. For business personnel who just used the prototype method, how can they choose a prototype tool suitable for themselves? This requires that the granularity of the prototype be defined based on the purpose of the prototype.

A proper tool is needed to clearly express your needs within a limited time. Business personnel generally do not have any programming experience. How can we create a static element interface and add a prototype of dynamic interaction?In order to better adopt the prototype development method at the demand stage, I have collected and used a variety of prototype tools and hope to find one that is easy to use, however, it can achieve general interaction functions. It is better for business personnel to learn it for an hour and use it by themselves. I used a prototype tool.GUI Design Studio,It is easy to operate without the help of developers. After half an hour of study, you will be able to build your own prototype.GUI Design Studio, a prototype toolA Brief Introduction to the use of this tool.

Prototype is not just an Interface

We can use the prototype to guide users to use the system to solve problems, but the prototype is not only a requirement, but also a design and development tool. Therefore, the prototype requires not only the customer's participation, technical personnel are also required,The prototype should be implemented by business personnel rather than developers as much as possible.Requirements Section.
Below isCommunityThe main function of the prototype is to display the interface, but it is not easy to make the interface well. There are still many things to be done below.
To support the interface, the prototype process is actually the process of designing the system. We all hope to move the development work forward as much as possible, and the work that needs to be done will not be left in the development stage. If the software model is certain, then the framework
If you do a good job, you will certainly be able to let the business personnel do some of the work that is now a developer (Note: This part of work should actually belong to the business personnel ), at that time, you will be able to realize that developing software is like doing prototype 1.
Fun!

Openexpressapp's support for prototype

Careful readers can see the roadmap on the right in the roadmap in "openexpressapp architecture-information system development platform"OpentoolIncluding support for the prototype. OEA focuses more on the transfer from software engineering to business engineering, so business-related prototypes will be considered as a key tool.

The prototype has three main purposes:

1. AsRequired toolsTo clarify and improve the requirement prototype, which is part of the initial implementation of the system.
2. AsDesign ToolsTo explore the design and selection scheme prototype, explore different user interface technologies, so that the system can achieve the best availability, and can evaluate possible technical solutions.
3. AsDevelopmentToolsIs the complete function implementation of the initial subset of the product. The entire product can be developed through a series of small-scale development cycles.

OEA's prototype tools will consider integrating demand tools, design tools, and development tools into oneBy business needs personnel, designers, and developers in the openexpressapp platform for coherent development, it is a horizontal, evolutionary, high fidelity prototype.

 

Other references:

User researcher comparison prototype

10 prototype development tools for Interactive Design

Non-prototype is not designed

Some website design prototypes

 

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