What Does a Prototype Engineer Do?

Prototyping is the best tool for interaction designers to communicate with PD, PM, and web development engineers. The design of this block must be the product of an interaction designer in principle. The user-centered concept of interaction design will permeate the entire product. Utilizing the professional vision and experience of interaction designers directly leads to the usability of this product.

Prototyping

Three basic prototypes can be created:

Drawings (on paper)

The users of prototype design mainly include business analysts, information architects, usability experts, product managers, IT consultants, user experience designers, interaction designers, interface designers, architects, program development engineers, etc.

The following roles use user interface prototypes:

Use case interpreter, to understand the user interface of the use case;

User interface prototypes must be built early in the inception phase or at the beginning of the elaboration phase. The analysis, design, and implementation of the entire system, including its "real" user interface, must occur after the prototype is built.

Please note: The main purpose of creating a user interface prototype is to reveal and test the functionality and usability of the system before the actual design and development begins. This way, you can ensure that the system you build is correct before you spend too much time and resources on development activities.

In order to successfully carry out this initial test, the cost of developing a prototype must be much lower than the cost of developing an actual system. At the same time, the prototype should have sufficient functions for meaningful use testing.

The user interface designer is responsible for maintaining the integrity of the user interface prototype and ensuring that a usable user interface is built using the prototype in accordance with the use case storyboard and boundary object requirements.

Prototyping is the first element of application development. It not only plays a role of communication, but also has a manifestation effect. The content and structure display and rough layout can explain how users will interact with the product, reflect the ideas of developers and UI designers, reflect the content that users expect to see, reflect the relative priority of content, and so on. ^[1]