As a growing HCI designer, you will start to see a lot of conversation in the community about prototyping. The role prototyping plays in the creation of great software is hard to overstate.
Prototyping, as we have discussed, is the creation of an early model of a software solution that is built to test the success or failure of the solution with our users. In the HCI design workflow, creating a prototype is essential to flushing out software ideas. The origins of the word come from the Greek word prototypon (πρωτότυπον). When you first start to create software solutions, they are never fully baked; they are early ideas and are supposed to be primitive. Ideas should be plentiful and the research you do as an HCI designer should uncover a lot of opportunity from a few useful insights.
Out of your user insights come ideas, concepts, or potential solutions. Many software opportunities can be generated from a user...