Idealization Effects in UX Evaluation at Early Concept Stages: Challenges of Low-Fidelity Prototyping

摘要

Early stage prototyping gains ever more importance in product development and User Experience (UX) evaluation. Especially in innovative technology and service domains (e.g., VR, AR, IoT) with increasing relevance of experiential aspects, early prototyping and evaluation is crucial to assess a product idea's success potential. A central question is which prototyping approach best represents the product idea and allows its valid yet cost- and time-efficient evaluation. While low-fidelity prototyping supports low-cost adjustments, a potential biasing factor are idealization tendencies: UX evaluation subjects may idealize unspecified product aspects following their imagination, possibly reducing results' validity. This study (N= 255) examines effects of prototype fidelity within early product development comparing different product concept representations systematically. Results imply that the lower the fidelity, the more people idealize a product idea, having numerous implications for prototype use in UX design and research. Practices to counteract idealization tendencies and optimize low-fidelity prototyping are discussed.