After completing each week's assignment, I now understand and reflect the course and its goals better. I see that we started with the quickest and cheapest prototyping method and ended up with an advanced one. I have never thought that I could do projection mapping. Although we did not conduct prototyping and testing within a project for this course, I had chance to reflect on the power and limits of prototyping in design thinking process.
To start with, I believe that design thinking process is not a linear process. Instead, it is iterative and circular. Although prototyping comes after "Define", with this course I have started to think that actually we are using prototyping methods and tools on other phases of the process. For instance, we use sketching and paper prototyping, or even Wizard of Oz prototyping in earlier phases of the process as well. As in ideation phase, we sometimes need to think of more concrete ideas or show them to the stakeholders. Then we can use prototyping methods and tools there. Similarly, to test our ideas in earlier phase of the process, we can use different tools and methods.
Moreover, I wouldn't think of non-visual prototyping before joining to this course. However, after conducting the assignment and tests, I now understand better that even though we will design a visual interface or product, users not always interact with the visual parts. Sometimes they have non-visual feedback or responses. So, this part is also our job. Otherwise, we will end up building a product not good enough.
I actually enjoyed more with the wireframing and high-fidelity prototyping, a lot. I challenged myself to use new tools on each prototyping assignment. In the end, I can confidently say that I am able to learn and use a new tool when needed during my design journey. I think it is important to be comfortable with different tools as a designer, because tools always change. As designers, we need to be able to adapt a tool quickly and make sure that we are using the best tool for our specific purposes. It is easy to stick with one tool and advance on that one. However, in that case we might end up with using an outdated design tool. Accordingly, this course taught me even in one week, it is possible to learn and use a new design tool for a project.
Last but not least, as with each assignment we also conducted tests, I am more than aware that our prototypes don't mean anything without user testing. We always need to be in search of user feedback, validation, and insight.