Virtual or Physical Prototypes? Development and Testing of a Prototyping Planning Tool

Abstract

Abstract Virtual or Physical Prototypes? Development and Testing of a Prototyping Planning ToolA new prototyping planning tool guides designers in choosing virtual vs. physical prototypingstrategies based on answers to likert-scale questions. We developed this tool to augment priorwork in design methods to facilitate prototyping strategy development. We will test the new toolwith engineering students individually tasked with optimization design of a four-bar linkage.Some students will be directed to use physical prototyping with provided materials, others willbe directed to use virtual prototyping with provided software, and a third group will use the newprototyping planning tool to decide which approach to use. The paper will describe the planningtool, detail the experiment run, and discuss results.