QUESTION ONE

a) Describe the characteristics of prototyping

i. They support creativity, helping the developer to capture and generate ideas,
facilitate the exploration of a design space, and uncover relevant information
about users and their work practices.
ii. They encourage communication, helping designers, engineers, managers,
software developers, customers, and users to discuss options and interact with
each other.
iii. They also permit early evaluation because they can be tested in various ways,
including traditional usability studies and informal user feedback, throughout the
design process.
b) What do you understand by Prototyping Strategy?
- It state that Designers must decide what role prototypes should play with respect to
the final system and in which order to create different aspects of the prototype.
c) Briefly Distinguished between Online and Offline Prototyping techniques
- Offline prototypes (also called paper prototypes) do not require a computer. They
include paper sketches, illustrated storyboards, cardboard mock-ups, and videos. The
most salient characteristics of offline prototypes (of interactive systems) is that they
are created quickly, usually in the early stages of design, and they are usually thrown
away when they have served their purpose.
- Online prototypes (also called software prototypes) run on a computer. They include
computer animations, interactive video presentations, programs written with scripting
languages, and applications developed with interface builders. The cost of producing
online prototypes is usually higher and may require skilled programmers to
implement advanced interaction and/or visualization techniques or to meet tight
performance constraints.
d) Define Scripting Language
- A scripting language is a programming language that is both light weight and easy to
learn, it is the most advanced rapid prototyping tools.
e) What is a stack?
-
QUESTION TWO

a) Describe the following Term;

i. Horizontal Prototypes: The purpose of a horizontal prototype is to develop
an entire layer of the design at the same time. This type of prototyping is most
common with large software development teams, where designers with
different skill sets address different layers of the software architecture.
Horizontal prototypes of the user interface are useful to get an overall picture
of the system from the user's perspective and address issues such as
consistency (similar functions are accessible through similar user commands),
coverage (all required functions are supported), and redundancy (the same
function is/is not accessible through different user commands).
ii. Vertical Prototypes: The purpose of a vertical prototype is to ensure that the
designer can implement the full, working system from the user interface layer
down to the underlying system layer. Vertical prototypes are often built to
assess the feasibility of a feature described in a horizontal, task-oriented, or
scenario-based prototype. For example, when we developed the notion of
magnetic guidelines in the CPN2000 system to facilitate the alignment of
graphical objects, we implemented a vertical prototype to test not only the
interaction technique but also the layout algorithm and the performance.
iii. Scenario-Based Prototypes: Scenario-based prototypes are similar to task-
oriented ones, except that they do not stress individual, independent tasks but
rather follow a more realistic scenario of how the system would be used in a
real-world setting. Scenarios are stories that describe a sequence of events and
how the user reacts. A good scenario includes both common and unusual
situations and should explore patterns of activity over time.
b) Describe Offline Rapid Prototyping Techniques, and briefly explain the types of Offline
Rapid Prototyping Techniques.
- Offline prototyping techniques range from simple to elaborate. Because they do not
involve software, they are usually considered a tool for thinking through the design
issues, to be thrown away when they are no longer needed. This section describes
simple paper-and-pencil sketches, three-dimensional mock-ups, Wizard-of-Oz
simulations, and video prototypes.
- Paper and Pencil.
The fastest form of prototyping involves paper, transparencies, and post-it notes to
represent aspects of an interactive system (for an example, see Muller, 1991). By
playing the roles of both the user and the system, designers can get a quick idea of a
wide variety of different layout and interaction alternatives in a short period of time.
- Mock-Ups.
- Architects use mock-ups or scaled prototypes to provide three-dimensional
illustrations of future buildings. Mock-ups are also useful for interactive system
designers, Several people work together to simulate interacting with this paper
prototype.
- Wizard of Oz.
The Wizard-of-Oz technique lets users interact with partially functional computer
systems. Whenever they encounter something that has not been implemented (or there
is a bug), a human developer who is watching the interaction overrides the prototype
system and plays the role destined to eventually be played by the computer. A
combination of video and software can work well, depending on what needs to be
simulated.
- Video Prototyping.
Video prototypes is using video to illustrate how users will interact with the new
system. As explained earlier, they differ from video brainstorming in that the goal is
to refine a single design, not generate new ideas. Video prototypes may build on
paper-and-pencil prototypes and cardboard mock-ups and can also use existing
software and images of real-world settings. We begin our video prototyping exercises
by reviewing relevant data about users and their work practices and then review ideas
we video brainstormed.
QUESTION THREE

a) Briefly describe the dimensions of prototyping techniques

i. Representation describes the form of the prototype (e.g., sets of paper sketches or
computer simulations).
ii. Precision describes the level of detail at which the prototype is to be evaluated
(e.g., informal and rough or highly polished).
iii. Interactivity describes the extent to which the user can actually interact with the
prototype (e.g., watch only or fully interactive).
iv. Evolution describes the expected life cycle of the prototype (e.g., throw away or
iterative).
b) Explain Graphical Libraries
- Graphical libraries underlie all the other tools presented or used in prototyping, it
main purpose is to provide the developer with a hardware independent, and
sometimes cross-platform application programming interface (API) for drawing on
the screen.
c) Why is the input subsystem event driven?
- The input subsystem is event driven because; each time the user interacts with an
input device, an event recording the interaction is added to an input event queue.
d) Define Presentation
- Presentation defines the graphical aspect of the widget which is usually controlled by
the application

QUESTION FOUR

a) Describe the types of prototype

- RAPID PROTOTYPES: The goal of rapid prototyping is to develop prototypes
quickly, in a fraction of the time it would take to develop a working system. By
shortening the prototype-evaluation cycle, the design team can evaluate more
alternatives and iterate the design several times, improving the likelihood of finding a
solution that successfully meets the user's needs. How rapid is rapid depends on the
context of the particular project and the stage in the design process.
 - ITERATIVE PROTOTYPES: Prototypes may also be developed with traditional
software development tools. In particular, high-precision prototypes usually require a
level of performance that cannot be achieved with the rapid online prototyping
techniques described earlier. Similarly, evolutionary prototypes intended to evolve
into the final product require more traditional software development tools. Interactive
systems are inherently more powerful than noninteractive ones They do not match
the traditional, purely algorithmic, type of programming: An interactive system must
handle user input and generate output at almost any time, whereas an algorithmic
system reads input at the beginning, processes it, and displays results at the end.
- EVOLUTIONARY PROTOTYPES: Evolutionary prototypes are a special case of
iterative prototypes, and are intended to evolve into the final system. Methodologies
such as Extreme Programming consist mostly of developing evolutionary prototypes.
Because prototypes are rarely robust or complete, it is often impractical and
sometimes dangerous to evolve them into the final system. Designers must think
carefully about the underlying software architecture of the prototype, and developers
should use well-documented design patterns to implement them.
b) Explain Online Rapid Prototyping Techniques
The goal of online rapid prototyping is to create higher precision prototypes than can be
achieved with offline techniques. Such prototypes may prove useful to better
communicate ideas to clients, managers, developers, and end users. They are also useful
for the design team to fine tune the details of a layout or an interaction. They may exhibit
problems in the design that were not apparent in less precise prototypes.
c) Briefly explain the types of Online Rapid Prototyping Techniques.
- Noninteractive Simulations: A noninteractive simulation is a computer-generated
animation that represents what a person would see of the system if he or she were
watching over the user's shoulder. Noninteractive simulations are usually created
when offline prototypes, including video, fail to capture a particular aspect of the
interaction, and it is important to have a quick prototype to evaluate the idea. It is
usually best to start by creating a storyboard to describe the animation, especially if
the developer of the prototype is not a member of the design team. One of the most
widely used tools for noninteractive simulations is Macromedia Director.
 - Scripting Languages: Scripting languages are the most advanced rapid prototyping
tools. As with the interactive simulation tools described above, the distinction
between rapid prototyping tools and development tools is not always clear. Scripting
languages make it easy to quickly develop throw-away prototypes, which may or may
not be used in the final system for performance or other technical reasons. A scripting
language is a programming language that is both light weight and easy to learn. Most
scripting languages are interpreted or semicompiled.

QUESTION FIVE

a) Define the application interface of a widget

- The application interface of a widget defines how it communicates the results of the
user interactions to the rest of the application.
b) What is prototyping?
- Prototyping can be define as a concrete representation of part or all of an interactive
system. A prototype is a tangible artifact, not an abstract description that requires
interpretation. Designers, as well as managers, developers, customers, and end users,
can use these artifacts to envision and reflect on the final system
c) What is the function of user interface development environments?
- User interface development environments or UIDEs provide an integrated collection
of tools for the development of interactive software.
d) State the disadvantage of higher level tools?
- The main disadvantage of higher level tools is that they constrain or stereotype the
types of interfaces they can implement.
e) Describe two (2) functions of a window system?
- Window systems provide an abstraction to allow multiple client applications to share
the same screen.
- Window systems offer a user interface to manipulate windows called the window
manager.
QUESTION SIX

a) Describe the following Term;

i. Task-Oriented Prototypes
 - Task-oriented prototypes include only the functions necessary to implement
the specified set of tasks. They combine the breadth of horizontal prototypes,
to cover the functions required by those tasks, with the depth of vertical
prototypes, enabling detailed analysis of how the tasks can be supported.
Depending on the goal of the prototype, both offline and online
representations can be used for task-oriented prototypes.

ii. Direct drawing libraries

- Direct drawing libraries provide functions to draw shapes on the screen once
their geometry and their graphical attributes are specified.

iii. Scene-graph based libraries

- Scene-graph based libraries explicitly represent the contents of the display
by a structure called a scene graph. It can be a simple list (called display list),
a tree (as used by many user interface toolkits; see next subsection), or a direct
acyclic graph (DAG).

iv. User Interface Builders

- A user interface builder allows the developer of an interactive system to create
the presentation of the user interface (i.e., the tree of widgets) interactively
with a graphical editor.
v. Model-Based Tools

- Model-based tools take the other approach, starting with the functional core
and domain objects and working their way toward the user interface and the
presentation. The motivation for this approach is that the raison d'etre of a
user interface is the application data and functions that will be accessed by the
user.

b) What is Application Framework and how does it address interfaces issue

- Application frameworks address a different problem than user interface builders and
are actually complementary.
- Application frameworks address this issue by providing a shell that the developer fills
with the functional core and the actual presentation of the nonstandard parts of the
interface.
c) List the modules of User Interface
i. The presentation
ii. The dialogue controller
iii. The application interface