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Testing in a lo-fi way

User Experience Team
tif (Tiffanie) 2016-05-06 20:28:22 UTC #1

Being creative with how we test things means we don’t have to build a lot to get some great feedback from people. I’d like to have a discussion about ways to test without creating the product.

A couple of favorite examples of this:
Amazon Echo - I posted this in Vaani and it’s so good I have to put it here too. Using a person to fake voice recognition commands The inside story of how Amazon created Echo, the next billion-dollar business no...

Amazon Echo is turning out to be a sleeper hit, but insiders say it’s anything but an overnight success story.

Palm Pilot - The famous “block of wood” that the creator of Palm used as a prototype The Philosophy of the Handheld

SANTA CLARA, California — People thought Jeff Hawkins was crazy when they saw him taking notes, checking appointments, and synchronizing a small block of wood with his PC, pretending all the while that the block was a handheld computer. "If I wanted...

ezoehunt (Elizabeth Hunt) 2016-05-06 20:29:50 UTC #2

Several lofi testing examples here.

tif (Tiffanie) 2016-05-09 18:33:31 UTC #3

Heard about this in the #vaani IRC channel.

This could be a really cool way to make a quick prototype:

tif (Tiffanie) 2016-05-10 16:41:19 UTC #4

@ezoehunt mentioned this during the All Hands today as what the SmartHome team is using to make their prototype .


sfoster (Sam Foster) 2016-05-10 17:18:33 UTC #5

We’ve got a few of their “Internet Button” devices, which give us a quick out-of-the-box / off-the-shelf gadget to put some code on connect to wifi, click buttons and make lights blink.

For our research prototype we need it to be portable and battery powered. We are using the same board and pinouts as the Internet Button, but adding in a LiPoly battery, charger/management module and our own LEDs, pager motor and button in a custom 3d printed enclosure. But it remains compatible with the off-the-shelf product allowing us to work on both hardware and software in parallel.

tif (Tiffanie) 2016-06-08 16:57:08 UTC #6

@natalia had a great idea about using FIMO clay to create quick prototypes, perhaps even in lieu of 3D printing. Thanks for sharing that! natalia 2016-06-08 18:39:33 UTC #7

I’m a fan of the concept of modularity (for software, hardware, everywhere!). It helps delivering personal experiences, efficiency and sustainability. But it opens the question of the ecosystem, openness and standardisation… all great areas for Mozilla to have a voice in the context of IoT I think!

natalia 2016-06-08 18:58:26 UTC #8

you’re welcome ! I should/could have thought of it before. It’s funny how a mix of 2 conversations helped untap the idea (which markets are we targeting? where do people have good Internet access? and how can we prototype things even faster and with more people?)