Design and Evaluation of Protobject: A Tool for Rapid Prototyping of Interactive Products.

Designing interactive prototypes involves multiple tools and skills. In addition, several design cycles are required to iterate through idea generation, evaluation of design alternatives, and development. Consequently, prototyping tools should offer flexibility and adaptability to allow designers to quickly test and evaluate different ideas, design alternatives, materials, interactions, etc. To meet these requirements, we designed Protobject - a rapid prototyping tool aimed at making the early stages of prototyping interactive products more flexible. Protobject allows designers to reinvent and reuse existing objects for prototyping purposes by making them interactive. After introducing the features of Protobject and discussing the differences with similar tools, we present a user evaluation through two workshop sessions held in Milan during Brera Design Days and attended by 22 people. The results suggest that Protobject facilitates cooperation between people with different skills by allowing them to envision interactive prototypes together.