ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Evolutionary prototyping

Evolutionary prototyping is like playing with toys to figure out how to make a better toy. Imagine you have a toy truck, but it doesn't work very well. You can take it apart and try different things to make it work better. You might experiment with different wheels, adding a motor or changing the design of the body. In the end, you will have a better toy truck because you kept trying different things until you made it work how you wanted it to.

Evolutionary prototyping works the same way, but with computer software. Sometimes, people want to create a new software program, but they don't know exactly what they want it to do, or they don't know how to make it work perfectly. Evolutionary prototyping means starting with a simple version of the software, like a toy truck, and playing with it to figure out what needs to be added or changed to make it work better, like changing the wheels or adding a motor to the truck.

Once you figure out what needs to be changed, you can make those changes and play with the new version of the software to see if it works better. If it still doesn't work perfectly, you can repeat the process until you have a software program that works how you want it to. It's like playing with different pieces of a puzzle until you find the ones that fit together perfectly.