What do you think of when you read the phrase Rapid Prototyping? Making something out of nothing really fast? Playing with models to see how they work? While the phrase might conjure up ideas of a Star Trek replicator or some wild 3D printing factory, rapid prototyping is a design thinking tool that all companies can execute in-house to learn those critical first lessons about their conceptual idea or product.
At it’s core, rapid prototyping is creating a visual – sometimes physical – working product of a concept. It’s taking the ideas generated from the brainstorming and concept development stages of the design thinking process and quickly producing a feasible and testable product, model or visual. You’re building prototypes to test your assumptions that started the whole design project in the first place. This is the chance to give your ideas life, to dig into the details and to see what is strong, and what needs work.
Prototyping a design or digital product is easy, prototyping a new business model is a lot harder, but both require the same steps and result in rapid learning before you make your decisions and move forward with the execution of the concept. Don’t worry, early prototypes are crude – when we test print books and brochures they’re nothing more than folded scrap paper with marker notes on them – this is how you can easily and quickly adjust the concept and tweak the details as you learn what is and isn’t working.
While your rapid prototyping will produce countless ‘works in progress’ – or in graphic design and advertising we call them versions which you’ve probably seen as FILENAME_v4.pdf coming from your design team – each iteration will bring you closer to the final product. Building them early, and often, lets you test the concepts in the real world. Whether it’s mocking up an app in Adobe XD to walk through your users flow, or printing proofs of a bus shelter ad to get the full feel of the messaging, this process will allow you to experience the overall product much faster.
It’s important to make this process a fast one. It allows you to fail faster, identify the weak points in the concept and settle upon the parts that are working. Like the mantra of Silicon Valley: start early and fail fast.
While each project will be different, you and your team already know which prototyping solution will work best for your immediate needs, there is no real need to break down how to prototype here, you inherently know it. What is important to understand at this stage is why prototyping can help your project down the line by removing risk and accelerating your growth. By creating anything from a digital mockup to a 2D sketch or a 3D printed product, you’re able to quickly create something that can then be tested with users; then studied, refined and presented to a larger audience for rapid feedback.
When looking at this from a business perspective, the focus is on the “I” in ROI. Prototyping is all about reducing the “I” by testing quickly. This is where designers inherent skills come shining through with little thought or prompting – they sketch. Relentlessly.
Designers’ passion for sketching and playing with ideas are the foundation for rapid prototyping. When we’re sitting in a boardroom listening and sketching, we’re testing and experimenting over and over to see how an idea can be formed into a final working solution. This allows the business minded people in the room to ‘see our thoughts’ and immediately offer input and feedback. It is alive in it’s rudimentary form, but it is already telling it’s story and inviting people to experience it.
Ultimately, it allows your team, stakeholders and even selected beta testers to experience your concept.
How can you start rapid prototyping for your concepts?
Try our five step process:
Start Simple: 2D sketches, basic wire frames or user walk throughs can give you the initial steps required to understand where you’re going, and what your concept can realistically do.
Define Your Story: Figuring out the story you want to tell will have happened already with the problem you’re trying to solve, now is the time to reapply that story to your concept to make sure they fit. Visualizing the concept allows the story to be told without complicating it with too many words.
Visual, Not Verbal: This is where the concept needs to stand on its own, without words. Essentially you’re showing, not telling. This is when the prototype takes on a real life feel through mockups using stock images, actual gestures with corresponding feedback, or 3D printing the first tactile product. This is the stage where you really get to bring in empathy for the user, as you’ll be the first one experiencing the concept in real life. It presents a wonderful opportunity to capture the details of how the concept will work and how your users will experience it.
More Options!: Now that you have your baseline rapid prototype, it’s time to explore what can happen around it. Make some additional prototypes to the left and right of it, explore what is working and see how making little adjustments to the overall layout/design can make major changes to the overall functionality of your concept. Ultimately at this point, you need to be willing to move around the concept and play with it’s possible iterations.
Play Time: Get your prototype dirty, kick it around, put it through the ringer and don’t defend it when it fails or breaks. This is the time failure is a golden win. Relish every fail and learn as much as possible from it. At this point you can let others into the game now to listen to their feedback. Let them push the concept and encourage them to break it. If it can’t stand up to the artificial lab conditions you’ve established – and lets be honest, we’re far more gentle with our concepts than the general public will be with the final product – then they don’t stand a chance in the world at large. So go ahead, kick them around and push them to their limits. The final product will thank you for your commitment to unrelenting excellence.
When you’ve fully built and tested your prototypes, the final product will be able to stand up to your users demanding needs, and your company will be stronger for taking the time to develop the right product. If there’s one take away from the prototyping phase of Design Thinking it is: Prototypes are built for abuse, but they are ultimately built to test the assumptions you’ve already deemed critical in your project.