While past work has demonstrated the ability of prototypes to boost design project performance, influence stakeholder buy-in, and improve design team communication, prototyping remains a ‘black-box’ process. The specific mechanisms through which prototypes affect designer cognition remains unknown. To date, there has been little work to operationalize theory and enable the fine-grain measurement of cognitive processes during prototyping tasks. In short, there is a lack of appropriate metrics to establish the intangible value of prototyping tasks via the measurement of the knowledge generated. The purpose of this work is to propose metrics that more holistically assess the value of prototypes. The proposed metrics are implemented in a design project to validate their utility in studying prototyping tendencies.

尽管过去的工作证明了原型能够提高设计项目的性能，影响利益相关者的认可并改善设计团队的沟通能力，但原型制作仍然是一个“黑匣子”过程。原型影响设计者认知的具体机制仍然未知。迄今为止，几乎没有开展任何工作来使理论实用化并能够在原型制作任务期间对认知过程进行精细测量。简而言之，缺少通过测量所生成的知识来确定原型任务无形价值的适当指标。这项工作的目的是提出度量标准，以更全面地评估原型的价值。拟议的度量标准在设计项目中实施，以验证其在研究原型开发倾向中的效用。