torsdag 15 oktober 2015

Selection of Hi-FI prototyping tool

Our lo-fi design has very limited user interaction -- just a touch screen button to request a changed route to visit the Skeppsholmen wharf.

Hence we realized immediately after a short discussion that the hi-fi prototyping tools suggested in the excersice instruction was unlikely to be relevant. Further study of Flinto and similar tools revealed that they were good for simulating click based interfaces.

Hence we decided to ignore the button interaction and focus on animating a boat over a map in Powerpoint. This gave a decent prototype with a rather small effort. We wanted more though. A button that changed routes for the boat and a sign telling when the time until the boat reached next wharf.

Further discussion over realistic options with reasonable options resulted in two very different tool candidates; Powerpoint and Unity3d.

Powerpoint pros:
  • Very easy to make simple animations.
  • Easy to learn.
Powerpoint cons:
  • Requires script programming to do more. We can stretch the limit without stretching by adding animated GIF images, but then we are out of option.
Unity 3D pros:
  • It is a full-blown game engine. Easy to make advanced animations, including physics with colliding and bouncing objects.


 Unity 3D cons:
  • Hard to learn. The only thing making Unity 3D a realistic option was the fact that all team members had previous knowedge. We were familiar with the tool from a mandatory graphics course previous semester. Hence the average design team should think twice before using this option.
  • Very tempting to add advanced features, including chunks of C# or Javascript code since the tool is full of features and easily adds code snippets in an object oriented graphical user interface.

Our decision was to use both tools in parallell and compare them. The prototype part of the team work was thus run in two tracks. Vincent focused on the safe, but limited Power Point track while Mårten focused on  the riskier Unity 3d that might not deliver any result at all in reasonable time.

Result:
  • Power Point delivered  an OK but limited prototype with a good animation in Hi-Fi class.
  • Unity delivered a good and very flexible prototype in Hi-Fi class. It was signignificantly more work though. The list of small bugs and desired features did also grow faster than it was cleaned though.

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