Parallel Prototyping

It seems obvious that parallel prototyping would yield better results in an experiment like the one from the article simply because the designer has more tools to choose from when creating his/her final project. The three designs were critiqued together thus giving the designer the opportunity to pull from each design the aspects that he/she likes the most. It provides and opportunity to optimize the final product because there is more to choose from. However, the difficulty with the parallel prototyping lies in the designer's ability to come up with the first three prototypes.

My struggle in this experiment would lie in the first step of parallel prototyping- coming up with three distinct designs. My tendencies, I think out of pure laziness, is to come up with one idea and run with it - until I hit a wall. Then I look to other sources for inspiration. I fear that should I have three ideas to chose from, I won't be able to chose. I wasn't able to narrow down a challenge for our last assignment. Who knows? It seems like leaving my challenge open ended may have been beneficial. Here's to accidental parallel prototyping.

I, and I am sure many others, have definitely experienced the frustration that goes along with serial prototyping. In serial prototyping, you put so much work into tweaking and perfecting one idea that it seems like a waste to start over, even if starting over would produce better results and sometimes even be more efficient. One thing that stood out to me in the analysis was how the serial prototypers took the feedback negatively. I think it is because they became attached to their one particular design. They spent the entire allotted 2+ hours modifying and perfecting their one design. Their design became a part of them, something personal. That's why they had the defensive reaction to criticism because it wasn't just a critique of their work, but a question of their ability.