Prototype:
The moment when I say prototype... it will strike in the mind that... something related to some 'type' -or 'kind'?
The original or model on which something is based or formed.
Someone or something that serves to illustrate the typical qualities of a class; model
- Dictionary
A prototype is an original type, form, or instance of something serving as a typical example, basis, or standard for other things of the same category.
- Wikipedia
Let us see how this prototype helps in our human psychology & computer.
Human brain, a wonderful gift & amazing organ in the human, even billion computers together cannot do the work of a normal human brain. But we can try to map some extern.
Brain recognize the things/objects/persons (anything) in certain format studied as 'Perception & Recognizing patterns'
Cognitive Psychology:
Prototype Matching - is a kind of perceptual model of human brain. In this model the input information to the brain is matched and mapped to the stored representations, a portion of objects are compared to bring out the match.
For an example when we say/ show a new object to a person... he/she will try to match this with the stored information (may be sounds like template matching) but here a small portion of feature related to that object is more than enough to compare or match- More the reference more the clarity.
e.g. Write English letter "M" in any different way - the person who knows English alphabet can identify.
M , M , m , M , m ,M, m , m
In normal software development:
The prototype method used in early stages of Design phase (even in Requirement phase) to bring-out the work model of the final product/software. i.e The final output will be perceived from this small entity called prototype.
In touch screen operations of Palm/PDA (especially the user input tasks) utilize this human mental model. The best e.g is Graffiti handwriting recognition software. Though each user use his own handwriting on the screen - certain entities of that letter helps the software (Graffiti) to recognize the letter.
Graffiti is the handwriting recognition software used in PDAs based on the Palm OS. Graffiti was originally written by Palm, Inc. as the recognition system for GEOS-based devices such as HP's OmniGo 120 or the Magic Cap-line and was available as an alternate recognition system for the Apple Newton MessagePad, when NewtonOS 1.0 couldn't recognize handwriting very well at all. Graffiti also runs on the Windows Mobile platform, where it is called "Block Recognizer," and on the Symbian UIQ platform as the default recognizer and was available for Casio's Zoomer PDA.
- Wikipedia
To know more about 'Graffiti'
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Finally:
More the clarity on the prototype more the Stability on both Object (in human brain) and Product/Software (in Software Development)...
