Horizontal prototyping is the designing of a broad set of features that do not necessarily have full functionality. It is meant to portray, to a user, that the potential product will have a wide set of similar those features. Vertical prototypes are different from horizontal prototypes in that vertical prototypes do not establish the broad set of features. Instead, these prototypes are meant to functionality that is closer to the core workflow. More specific functions and features, not broad tasks, would be seen in vertical prototypes.
1. One issue with heuristic evaluations and cognitive walkthroughs is that the process typically only involves experts so when these reviewers run into issues with the prototype, the can recover from errors much more quickly than how a regular user would be able to in reality. This is controversial because the reviewers may not be aware that the issue is major enough to say that, let’s say, an error message should be located there for others. This would be problematic because the actual product may not be as helpful to the real users, which would result in a worse-off user experience.
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Another reason is that the reviewers may not take into consideration of the fact that the system does not reflect how the user would think. In other words, the system may not match the real world. This includes thinking like the user, speaking like the user, and having interface responses that logically make sense to the user. While this is the purpose of cognitive walkthroughs, this still may not be resolved because of the fact that the reviewers already have knowledge of the system. Their heuristics would be a different set and would apply differently to the issues that they would come across. The issues that the reviewers may come across may be more specific whereas the average user may have issues with the broader