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Chapter 4. Developing Applications in Cooperation: X’treme Prototyping
new technologiesusers by definition not familiar with the technology and have dif-
ficulties grasping its benefit. Simultaneously, designers and developers often lack
the understanding of the relevant issues in specific working domains. In order to
create solutions that really go beyond incremental changes of established routines,
these limiting boundaries have to be overcome: Real innovation is not generated by
technology itself, but technology can act as a vehicle to create new opportunities
that innovate and change established routines and work practices.
In particular, users have to be given the possibility to make first-hand experiences
in order to articulate sound statements about their potential needs that are beyond
their own experience
[
v. Hippel 1988
]
. Later, this articulated needs have to be
identified and integrated into the development process.
The success story of VisiCalc
[
Gal 1996
]
, the first interactive spreadsheet software,
illustrates nicely how new technology can impact and change common work prac-
tices. Though many other programs on mainframe computers produced outputs
that looked like ledger sheets, the dramatic (and largely unexpected) change came
from the spread sheet’s interactivity. VisiCalc combined the regular structure of
the familiar ledger sheet with an underlying structure of interlinked formulas. This
was the first time a non-technical user could build a complex financial model incre-
mentally, and could explore the model through successive iterations of inputs. This
quantitative change in ease of use meant a qualitative change in how people worked
with the data. No user could have imagined these opportunities before having seen
it. But after experiencing such as a system, the user can explore these new oppor-
tunities, can relate to his daily work, and judge its usefulness. In its time, VisiCalc
was a radically new idea that showed a novel use of technology to change common
work practices. Finally, it led to the introduction of desktop computers to millions
of o ces.
The main contribution of this chapter is to introduce the concept of X’treme Proto-
types as a method to generate innovative applications. This concept is based on the
list of requirements in Section 2.1. The approach aims to extend the users’ views
on technological advances in order to free their mind and allow thoughts about
radical changes. Simultaneously, this approach familiarizes the developers with the
constraints and needs of specific real-world applications. Prototypes, referred to
as X’treme Prototypes, are used as vehicles to give a feel of how future implemen-
tations look like regardless of their immediate feasibility. The user is exposed to
technology he has never experienced before, referred to as ‘prototype jump’ (see
Figure 4.1). By this the user gets stimulated and can better imagine future uses and
extrapolate from a new standpoint. The overall goal is to create applications that
represent novel solutions, i.e. concepts that are radically di erent and advanced
compared to the status quo. Due to its purely technology-driven nature this ‘pro-
totype jump’ can only represent a first starting point for conducting cooperative
application development with . Accordingly, user constraints and needs have been
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