Operationalising + Horizontal, Vertical and Diagonal P'types

Exercise #1 A Dashboard

What components are relevant to driving behaviour?

There are dozens of parts of a car's dashboard that are relevant to driving.  The steering wheel, the horn, the speedometer, the rev-counter, the fuel gauge, the indicators, the windscreen wipers, the windscreen, the rear view mirror, the side mirrors, the clutch, break, accelerator, gear stick, hand break, and even the hazard lights switch.

What are the interactions of those components with the driver when driving?

The steering wheel turns, the dashboard has readouts, the indicator makes a noise and flashes a light, the clutch/gears can be determined by the sound of the engine, the responsiveness of the car and the rev counter.  Most of the feed back is visual with some auditory and some physical (the wheel, for example).

What would I test?

If I was changing the setup I'd play with the pedals.  I'd try and make it so a paraplegic could use the car (I know there are options on the market already, but it's the thing I'd want to change.)  I'd maybe try having something where you squeeze the steering wheel for acceleration and possibly move the horn to make room in that space for the break.  Maybe something voice activated?  Maybe it can detect when you turn the wheel and adjusts the speed accordingly.  I don't know, that's what I'd play with. 

How would I test?

Rather than making a whole car I might make use of a driving simulator on the computer.  I'd make a console peripheral and test these ideas with that.  I'd be probably try get a higher number of people who've never driven before to test the system so that they don't spend so long just doing thing automatically. 

Exercise #2 Alarm Clock

Horizontal

A horizontal prototype for the alarm clock might be a p'type to test the shaking motion to snooze the alarm.  You could set up a Pringles container with some rice in it and get people to shake that to test the concept. 

Vertical

A vertical prototype might be setting up a daisy-chain of alarms.  In high detail you make it so you can set many alarms, but don't worry about anything else. 

Diagonal

A diagonal p'type might be creating a system which you can use to set and alarm, change the tone on it and then edit it before deleting it.  This tests a series of interactions, but doesn't have full functionality of the finished product.