Output details

Rapid development of tangible interactive appliances: achieving the fidelity/time balance

Co-Author Statement: The paper was conceived by Gill and Loudon. Gill was the principal author with Loudon one of three making a substantial contribution to the writing. Gill, Loudon and Walker planned the user tests together. Gill and Loudon carried out around 80% of the user tests with contributions from Walker and Woolley. Gill collated the data from all the user tests. Walker analysed the data via ANOVA etc. Other analysis and discussion was the work of Gill with some key observations from Loudon and Dix. Dix contributed to the discussion sections and made some structural suggestions. Ramduny-Ellis and Hare’s contributions were principally editorial.

This paper, published in a special issue of the International Journal of Arts & Technology, centres on the value of tangible prototyping. It reports on the results of a series of trials in which the value of a prototype’s tangibility was measured. It evidences and demonstrates that a physical prototype outperforms its virtual equivalent even if the product chosen is suited to virtual prototyping and where there is an unfavourable disparity in fidelity levels between the two. In essence a rough tangible prototype that took 8 hours to build outperformed a high fidelity touch screen interface that took 20 times longer to construct.

This connection between physicality and usability has often been argued but never proven or measured. This paper used proven statistical analysis methods to empirically measure the differences, comparing the results of three separate experiments in the form of user trials. The research is relevant to a range of disciplines that rely on the physical (and have long argued its importance) such as philosophy, cognitive psychology, human computer interaction science craft and design. It also has broader implications in that its findings have strong commercial value.