No way - that’s a waste of work! This train of thought came from first generation prototyping where limited functionality was “hacked” together to give a minimal visible artifact to customers. But with a next generation technology like Simunication, the prototype can be a very powerful artifact just like any other artifact in your process.
I disagree that prototypes are for minimal functionality to get customer sign off then thrown away. Prototypes should be developed with the customer to a point where they can completely simulate their business processes with behavior and user interface. Then the prototype has many valuable uses beyond a reference for developers building the appliciation.
A Simunicator prototype, kept updated to mirror the application in the field, can be used for visualizing & brainstorming next versions, for driving new business with customers, as a place to go for up to date use cases & requirements, for understanding how and why a user requirement exists, for viewing past feedback, user training & test case development.
Our prototypes & simulations are “incubateable” and can be deployed as fully functional alpha's or beta's to get real life feedback. Imagine a customer calling up months after the application was delivered saying “we’d like to add a feature that does this”, you hang up the phone, modify thier up-to-date prototype and then have the feature simulated and available next day for the customer to review!
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I fully agree with this. I have been evangelizing "production level" prototypes for many years now. I have not used Simunication yet but based on what I see I will sign-up and evaluate. I work as a Sr. UX/Information Architect, but come from an engineering background. I feel a good process should incorporate reusable artifacts as much as possible.
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