Evaluative prototyping

Evaluative prototyping gathers feedback on prototypes to understand how people experience a potential future service. It involves conducting tests to evaluate specific questions or hypotheses that you have in mind. Let's say you have developed a prototype for a new service and want to gather insights about how users perceive and engage with it. Evaluative prototyping allows you to carefully assess your assumptions through different types of testing. Depending on the situation, these tests can be formal and structured or more informal and spontaneous.

When conducting formal evaluative prototyping, you aim to create prototypes that closely resemble the real service experience. For example, if you're interested in understanding users' emotional responses, you would provide them with an opportunity to actually experience the service or be a part of it. This immersive approach helps capture genuine reactions and feedback.

Qualitative research and analysis methods like contextual and in-depth interviews are used to support the evaluation process. They provide valuable insights and metrics that help you gather meaningful and factual data about user experiences.