How many times have you gone round in circles debating the merits of an idea with a group of stakeholders over a 3-hour call?
“If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a prototype is worth a thousand meetings.” — Saying at IDEO
Stop the anguish of endless discussions by prototyping your way to quicker and more effective decisions.
A proto-what?
A prototype is a tool that helps make ideas tangible. It is a model or representation of a proposed solution that can be used to test ideas and tell stories. Prototypes can take many forms, from sketches to a full-sized mockups of a physical space.
How does this help me?
Communication: A prototype can make ideas tangible so that you have a common reference point for conversations rather than talking in vague terms about a vision or idea.
Research: It can be used as a research tool to help you understand how people think and behave in specific contexts.
Exploration and validation: Prototypes can be used to answer questions, test assumptions, and validate ideas that you have for a product or service.
Let’s do it! But where do I start?
Prototyping can happen in any part of the design process and can be used as part of the designing the process itself e.g. testing your research or workshop activities before carrying them out.
However, the choice of prototype depends on what stage of the design process you are in and what questions or assumptions you want to test.
Here’s a quick starting point to assess what kind of prototyping might be suitable:
I want to learn more about this!
If you’re relatively new to prototyping, check out this article on “What is prototyping?” by the Interaction Design Foundation.
If you’re already familiar with prototyping and are keen to understand how to use prototypes in more technical detail, I recommend reading the paper “What do prototypes prototype?”
Below is an excerpt from the second article:
Role prototypes: Investigate function and what it can do for a user. Typically used in earlier stages of the design process to figure out if an idea makes sense.
Look and feel prototypes: Explore options for the concrete experience of an artifact (the thing being designed). This may come at an early or late stage depending on the importance of the look or form factor of the artifact in the whole product or service.
Implementation prototypes: Figure out technical feasibility and how the artifact can work. This typically comes after you have validated the role of the artifact.
Defining your prototyping strategy
Often, we hear a range of terms like “validating concepts” to “delivering a proof-of-concept” in design briefs that sound like prototypes, but may well refer to a final deliverable that is closer to a high-fidelity implementation prototype than a low-fidelity or role prototype.
Clarifying what a prototype means and the expectations of its purpose with stakeholders and team members is key.
One might also encounter enthusiastic stakeholders who want to prototype absolutely everything. To help keep within time and budget constraints, consider what assumptions we currently have about the product or service that pose the most risk.
Prioritise and test the riskiest assumptions first.
In the next part of this series on prototyping, I’ll be exploring rapid service prototyping in more detail.