Rapid prototyping on the example of software development in automotive industry: The importance of their provision for software projects at the correct time

Software prototyping is a powerful method for the identification of usability problems at the very beginning of software development. This paper deals with the development of a prototype used for usability testing and presenting it to stakeholders at the correct time. A low-fidelity (lo-fi) prototype was created for a software product in the automotive industry, however the usability test was shifted to conduct it with the latest build of the software application. This paper emphasizes on the effectiveness of prototypes together with usability studies. It gives an overview about the experiences with usability testing on a high-fidelity (hi-fi) prototype late in the software development process. The main conclusion is that we assume that solving the usability findings of a hi-fi prototype is more difficult and expensive than using results from a lo-fi prototype earlier. In future, we will conduct a lo-fi prototype usability study to confirm this assumption.