Rapid Prototyping

Seminar date/time: Tuesday, September 14, 1999, 7:00-8:00 p.m.
Location: Room 626 Aderhold Hall

Seminar Description

This seminar will introduce the concept of rapid prototyping as an alternative design methodology and contrast it with traditional instructional design.

This seminar will be conducted by Lloyd Rieber.

Seminar Preparation

Read the following article before the seminar begins:

Tripp, S., & Bichelmeyer, B. (1990). Rapid prototyping: An alternative instructional design strategy. Educational Technology Research & Development, 38(1), 31-44.

Seminar Agenda

Background

• Rapid prototyping: Ready -- Fire -- Aim
• Differences in how design and development are carried out
• Two non-ID examples: Writing a paper; building paper planes
  (click here for an excerpt from my 1993 book describing this paper plane analogy)
• A model of rapid prototyping (by Tripp & Bichelmeyer, 1990)
• Characteristics of rapid prototyping
• Michael Streibel on the limitations of traditional ISD
• Why do it?
  1. Clarify Needs
  2. Enhance creativity
  3. Reduce errors in final product
  4. Increase usability
  5. Increase customer acceptance
• Risks associated with Rapid Prototyping
  1. Method not understood by client or developers
  2. Endless revision
  3. Premature release
  4. Goal/feature creep
  5. Demands on SME
  6. Project management requirements different

Some personal examples

• Mineshaft: Learning about ID and RP before I knew these things had names!
• Some of the work I've done with my son Thomas

Ghostbusters, Superhero

• Nowhere Road -- The Game
• I discuss some of these themes in my essay: The Proper Way to Become an Instructional Technologist

Michael Streibel (1991, p. 12) well articulated what I had felt as I tried to reconcile instructional design as it was written and talked about versus how I had actually done it:

"I first encountered the problematic relationship between plans and situated actions when, after years of trying to follow Gagné's theory of instructional design, I repeatedly found myself, as an instructional designer, making ad hoc decisions throughout the design and development process. At first, I attributed this discrepancy to my own inexperience as an instructional designer. Later, when I became more experienced, I attributed it to the incompleteness of instructional design theories. Theories were, after all, only robust and mature at the end of a long developmental process, and instructional design theories had a very short history. Lately, however, I have begun to believe that the discrepancy between instructional design theories and instructional design practice will never be resolved because instructional design practice will always be a form of situated activity (i.e. depend on the specific, concrete, and unique circumstances of the project I am working on)."

 

Connell, J., & Shafer, L. (1989). Structured rapid prototyping: An evolutionary approach to software development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Yourdan Press.

Gayeski, D. M. (1991). Rapid prototyping: A new model for developing multimedia. Multimedia Review(Fall), 18-23.

Hartley, J. (1992). Concurrent engineering:shortening lead times, raising quality, and lowering costs. Cambridge, MA: Productivity Press.

Henson, K. L., & Knezek, G. A. (1991). The use of prototyping for educational software development. Journal of Research on Computing in Education, 24(2), 230-239.

Jones, M. K., Li, Z., & Merrill, M. D. (1992). Rapid prototyping in automated instructional design. Educational Technology Research & Development, 40(4), 95-100.

Northrup, P. T. (1995). Concurrent formative evaluation: Guidelines and implications for multimedia designers. Educational Technology, 35(6), 24-31.

Rieber, L.P. & Matzko, M.J. (in press). Serious design of serious play. Educational Technology.

Schrage, M. (1996). Cultures of prototyping. In T. Winograd (Ed.), Bringing design to software, (pp. 191-205). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Schuler, D., & Namioka, A. (Eds.). (1993). Participatory design: Principles and practices. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Streibel, M. (1991). Instructional plans and situated learning: The challenge of Suchman's theory of situated action for instructional designers and instructional systems. In Gary Anglin (Ed.),Instructional technology: Past, Present, and Future (pp. 122). Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited.

Tripp, S., & Bichelmeyer, B. (1990). Rapid prototyping: An alternative instructional design strategy. Educational Technology Research & Development, 38(1), 31-44.

Visscher, I., Gustafson, K., & Plomp, T. (1999). Educational development: An overview of designs. In T. P. N. N. J. van den Akker (Ed.), Design methodology and development research in education and training, . Amsterdam: Klewer.

Many thanks to Kent Gustafson for letting me borrow some of his ideas for this seminar.