*Planted: 20 March 2025 | Last Tended: 4 April 2025* #todevelop Prototypes of new technology can take different forms. Some of these forms are “works-like” prototypes, where the prototype is meant to function like the desired experience but using hardware or a non-ergonomic form factor because those may not have reached a point where the experience can be packaged in that. Some of these prototypes are more “feels-like”, where the industrial design of the prototype is meant to mimic the experience of physically using it — essentially the opposite of a works-like prototype in that the focus is on how it physically feels to use it. ##### Time Machines A Time Machine prototype uses whatever technology we have today, even if it’s bulky, non-performant, etc. to mimic the environment and experience of using a new technology as closely as possible. Time Machines are meant to show the full promise of a future technology using a completely unconstrained prototype — the lack of constraints assumes that these are problems that can or will be solved in the future. An example of a Time Machine prototype would be using a large rendering farm in a room to produce incredibly advanced and realistic VR graphics in a headset that is bulkier and heavier in order to support the processing power. In such a prototype, the takeaway is on how the realistic graphics feel to see in VR, but with the understanding that to achieve it would take advances in processing power in a form factor that is light enough and mobile enough to fit on a person’s head. **When to use:** A time machine prototype is the right choice when you want someone to experience a new advancement's full power but you can't put it in a form factor that's feasible (for cost reasons, or form factor reasons, etc.). ##### Wizard of Oz A Wizard of Oz prototype is one in which a human plays the part of whatever system the user is going to interact with, usually a computer. This type of prototype fakes a system that can give and get perfect information so that you can test only how a person would respond to that information and not the limitations of the system. Wizard of Oz prototypes tend to be paper-based, because the human running the prototype can then create new pieces of paper on the fly to accommodate unexpected responses. **When to use:** use a Wizard of Oz prototype when you don't want to complicate the data collection with the limitations of a system that may not be able to respond dynamically enough.