Which prototype to augment? A retrospective case study on industrial and user interface design

Abstract

Emerging augmented reality and tangible user interface techniques offer great opportunities towards delivering rich, interactive prototypes in product development. However, as most of these are evaluated outside the complexity of. Design practice, little is known about the impact of these prototypes on the resulting product or the process. As a part of a larger multiple-case study approach, this study attempts to explore cues to characterize and improve the design practice of information appliances by performing a retrospective case study. The development of a handheld digital oscilloscope was chosen as an exemplar, embodying complexity in both form giving, interaction and engineering aspects. Although some of the employed techniques have grown obsolete, reflection on this development project still forecasts interesting and useful issues that should be considered while developing new design support methods and techniques. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.