Let's step back from MAX/MSP/Jitter/Cyclops, step back from all of those gorey details of technology implementation for a little while. What is essential about your concept? What are the stories it tells? What are the experiences you wish to deliver, to catalyze? And how will you translate these ideas into clear design? What does the installation (eco-)system do? What are the mappings between user actions and system responses?

storyboards

Develop scenarios of how people will experience your installation. Write a page of text that describes them clearly. Now, create storyboards based on them. A storyboard is a sequence of sketches, with labels and stories associated with each. The sketches themselves can be small, and without too much detail, like a comic strip. Details are found in the references below.

lo-fidelity prototype

Move your storyboards forward into a set of lo-fidelity prototype elements. The prototype should present clear ideas about how things will look and feel. How does the user know what to do, and how it will effect the installation? That is, what are the essentail affordances and mappings? Consider issues of implementation here, even though you won't be doing it for this deliverable. In the next deliverable, you will use these prototypes and scenarios during user testing.

references

Gayle Curtis, Laurie Vertelney, Storyboards and Sketch Prototypes for Rapid Interface Visualization, CHI 1990 Tutorials.

Marsden, K. and Aiken, P. (1993), Experiences Using Cooperative Interactive Storyboard Prototyping, CACM 36:6 (June 1993), 57-64.

Preece, J. Rodgers, Y., Sharp, H., Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction, Chapters 8, 9.

Rettig, M., Prototyping for tiny fingers CACM 37:4 (April 1994), 21-27 .