David:
One additional note on prototypes.
I was thinking of the enhanced ease with which prototype communication design objects are now made, but that is of course only part of the story. As a communication designer I now engage in design of communication systems and these ARE much more challenging to design, prototype, and test.
Again, a personal case in point. Yesterday I had a phone conference with a colleague on the research report on the Hygiene Matters poster-based visual communication curriculum we had just piloted in Lome, Togo - Africa. It's something we had designed (paper coming next spring). The aim is to improve health, and other studies have shown by improving health you improve the entire life and career experience, by reducing worm infestation in children through better hygiene instruction in school. To run the program we had to have the support of the Togo Ministries of Health and Education, I found myself in their offices last May, and cooperation of the WHO. The material we design consists of a large poster without words that explains how one gets worms and how to prevent getting them, and a fully illustrated 32 page teachers' guide and associated teacher training protocols and materials. Last May I was observing the master-teacher teacher training. We did a health survey in 30 schools, and a pilot program in 178 schools including the 30 surveyed schools (73,726 students) and a validation study in 18 schools with a pre and two post tests with 2560 students. My conclusion (the report is still being finalized) is that the curriculum seems to be pretty effective but the design of the research protocol needs additional work.
My observation relative to this thread and my own comments on prototyping is that design prototyping can be complex involving not only the design intervention/object but also the design of the means to test the intervention/object. We should have tested a more fully functional prototype of our research.
Back to my disagreement with Terry much earlier in this thread, none of these were primarily specifications. The protocol consisted of objects and actions associated with them. In fact, the process we specified in the protocol was pretty good (numerous re-tests of the control group) but the instrument(s) were not because they in-effect gave the control group the curricular outline so that with each re-test the control group improved their knowledge and performance on the test. The tests damaged a good process.
Anyway, sorry I did not think of this approach to prototype before in my comments on recent relative simplicity of prototyping. It's easy to prototype a brochure, harder to prototype a system of using that brochure to change a life.
Best…
Mike Zender
University of Cincinnati
Editor, Visible Language
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