16a. What is Prototyping

Prototyping is one of the main activities in the product development process.

Along with “Understanding Customer Needs” and “Divergent Thinking,” I’d throw it on the list of “Universal Topics” covered in all discussions of product development.

Let’s understand some of the basics before diving a little deeper into this universally important topic.

What is a Prototype

I, personally, don’t think it’s all that important to narrowly or specifically define the term “prototype.” I use the term broadly, and I think it’s perfectly OK to do so.

Prototype — An initial or early construction of the product concept, less formed than a “final” product.

Prototype (definition #2) — a mock-up, rough draft, a version of your product meant to be iterated upon.

Pretty much everything made before the final product is a prototype. If you’re designing something that is constantly evolving, like a website, then to some extent, your product is always a prototype of some future version.

As an activity, prototyping is all about learning.

Different NPD methods have their names for the cycle of building a prototype and learning from it. Some call it “Build Measure Learn.” Others call the cycle “Design-Build Test Learn.”

If you want to get all fancy and advanced (trust me, don’t do it right now), there are some subtle distinctions. But we’re not there yet.

For right now, just know that prototyping is a catch-all term for building something in order to test a theory. It’s a term that describes a learning system.

What is the Purpose of Prototyping? (y tho)

Prototyping serves many purposes:

Learning. The first obvious purpose of a prototype is to answer the question, “will this work?”

• Prototyping is an attempt to validate a hypothesis. That hypothesis might be super complex (e.g., our theory is that this system will do X) or super simple (e.g., I wonder if this taco will taste better if I put some tortilla chips into it? Yes, it does.)

Scheduling. Another great purpose of prototyping is to drive a project schedule.

• Completing one cycle of building, testing, and then analyzing a prototype is a very clear milestone. Many product development teams use a series of prototype iterations as the foundation for their overall project schedule (i.e., we’ll make two prototype iterations and then launch).

Communication. Marty Cagen’s book Inspired purports that the best Product Spec you can build is a prototype. As opposed to writing a 50-page document nobody will read, why not just make a prototype and show people what the product should do?

• While this doesn’t work in all industries (tacos and software maybe, but not rockets), a prototype communicates a lot about the team’s vision for the product. It helps other people “get it” when words just won’t do the trick.

Ultimately, you’ll see that prototyping is the primary mechanism that product developers use to get from a concept to a finished product.

We’ll talk more about this subject in the coming sections, covering:

• Types of prototypes
• The build-measure-learn cycle
• Learning systems
• As always, best practices and great resources

16.b Types of Prototypes

Not all prototypes are the same. There are different “types” of prototypes made to accomplish different things. Let’s discuss this.

A “Looks-Like” prototype is something that — you guessed it — looks like a product or product concept. It’s a visual representation only. No function. Wireframes are typical “Looks-like” prototypes.

If you build some functionality into a “Looks Like” prototype, then it becomes a functional prototype. Some people call this a “Works like” prototype.

A “Functional Prototype” is a prototype that captures both the function and visual appearance of the intended design.

Functional prototypes don’t work perfectly and are often at a different scale (i.e., smaller) or lacking in some sophistication (i.e., made out of cardboard).

Sure, I’d call this a Functional Prototype. Pretty clever. Source.

Product developers also use simulation and modeling to prototype products. These are virtual or analytical prototypes, thus named because they are virtual, and they help you do analysis.

Virtual prototypes also make pretty pictures for the Marketing department to use in advertising, and you gotta have those if you want to look cool.

A Virtual or Analytical Prototype. Racecars are cool. Source.

Other terms you might want to know to include Internal, External, and Public Prototypes

• Internal prototypes — For your eyes only
• External — For key selected users
• Public — For everyone

System-level, sub-system level, component level

In some cases, prototypes are described by the breadth of the final product they encompass.

That’s a fancy way of saying that you don’t have to prototype the entire car to test a new brake pad. If you hear the term “sub-system” or “component” prototype, that’s what it means.

Digital prototyping

These are often UX prototypes (user experience). They’re used to mimic how the digital product will respond when a user interacts with it. There are many tools to build digital prototypes; you don’t need to learn how to code to make them, which is nice.

Model

Even something as unsophisticated as a scale model could be considered a prototype. Below is an image of a scaled-down model of a Center for Children Who Can’t Read Good and Who Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too.

Derek Zoolander is not familiar with the concept of prototyping.

What’s the Best Type of Prototype?

This question is kind of like asking, “what’s the best exercise to do in the gym?” It kind of depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. It’s a pretty stupid question, actually.

The best type of prototype is the one that most effectively accomplishes your goal.

It’s the tool that gets the job done most efficiently (efficient = lowest cost, fastest).

Product developers with a wide understanding of prototyping tools and best practices are best equipped to design prototypes efficiently.

Next, we’re going to get into the topic of Build-Measure-Learn, which is the whole point of prototyping.

16c. Build-Measure-Learn

As said before, prototyping is one of the most important things in all product development. It’s how you go from concept to product.

The essence of prototyping can be captured in three simple words: build, measure, curse learn.

If I had to summarize what a product development team is doing most of the time, it would be this: people are building shit, measure shit, and learning shit.

Build-Measure-Learn Distilled

Prototyping is about building something that might work, testing to see if it does work, and then learning from the result. Build, measure, learn. That’s it.

Some people change a word or two when describing this process. In general, everyone is talking about the same thing.

Build-measure-learn is ultimately a learning mechanism. Prototyping is a learning mechanism.

“…the basic cycle consists of taking the current thinking regarding the design, building a prototype that embodies the key aspects of that thinking, and then testing that prototype to determine where additional design refinements are and are not needed.” — Revolutionizing Product Development

Why is it So Important?

Product development is a process that involves hundreds or thousands of decisions.

In product development, we must go from a state of high uncertainty to a state of low uncertainty.

In order to make better decisions and to reduce uncertainty, you need knowledge. In order to have knowledge, you need to learn. How do you learn? Through prototyping.

Iterations

Product development — and prototyping in general — is highly iterative.

If we knew how to get the product right on the first try, we wouldn’t need prototyping . . . but we don’t know how to do that; ergo we need prototyping. (Not often you get to use the word “ergo”)

You’ll hear terms like “iterative” or “loops” or “cycles” or “spirals” thrown around in product development. In general, these are all the same thing — they describe the build-test-learn process.

You may also hear the term iteration velocity. It’s a fancy term, but a basic and important concept.

Iteration velocity — the speed with which a person/team/organization can build, measure, and learn.

Iteration velocity will determine how many loops or spirals can be achieved in a given time period. If you’re constrained by a market launch target, which is often the case, then your iteration velocity will determine how much learning you can achieve before you go to market.

• More learning, better product.
• Faster iteration velocity, more learning.
• Faster iteration → better product. (That’s the transitive property #logic)

Source of this image: Boagworld

15d. Convergent Thinking via the Democratic Method of Voting

Voting. Decision-making by committee. It can be messy.

Fortunately, there is a somewhat effective method of using the wisdom of the crowd: dot voting!

Dot-Voting Distilled

• Show all the options in some consistent manner, like as 1-page summaries on a wall
• Give people a limited number of votes
• The votes are green (good) and red (bad) sticky note dots
• Let them vote for their favorite concepts

Source

Dot-voting has also been called the “Butterfly method” by some people in Design Thinking because, when you use post-it notes instead of sticky dots, the wall starts to look like it has a bunch of butterflies on it. Cool, huh?

Anyway . . .

What Dot-Voting is Good For

More than anything, dot-voting is a pretty quick and easy way to gauge relative interest from a group of people.

And if you empower a diverse group of people to vote — say folks from Manufacturing, Design, and Marketing — you then see a diverse range of opinions in the results. That’s a good thing.

Dot-voting can also be used to vote for features or critical specs — not just “product concepts.” This option might reveal, for example, that regardless of what concept is chosen, the team feels strongly that the final product should have X feature.

What Dot-Voting Ain’t Good Fer

Just blind, majority-rules decision-making. After all, the masses or hordes are not exactly strategic in their thinking.

Like most decision-making or convergent thinking processes, dot-voting is usually followed by a reflection process. Decision-makers reflect on the new insights rather than simply just selecting the concept with the most votes.

Reflection might involve analyzing why the results came out as they did, how concepts might be combined or evolved to improve the landscape of options further, or how some concepts might need further refinement before they can be properly evaluated.

What to Watch Out For

One common problem for dot-voting is that the concept which is presented best tends to get more votes. Like any election, you want to make sure not to confuse “a good looking option” with an option that has merit. (I’ll refrain from making any political jokes at this time.)

Point being, ensure you’re comparing concepts in a similar consistent manner

More best practices and pitfalls are listed in this well-researched article.

Dot-macracy. Make it work for you!

I like this image cause it shows concepts being combined. Source

15e. Summary of Concept Selection

The decision matrix, Pugh matrix, and similar “structured” methods are useful for comparing and contrasting different product concepts in a simple, clear framework.

They might not be able to capture all the complexity of real-world decision-making, but that doesn’t render them useless. They’re certainly better than alternative unstructured methods like going with your gut, going with your first idea, or going with the opinion of the highest-paid person in the room.

Remember that Screening is a part of Concept Selection. You are getting bad ideas out of the mix in progress.

Remember, too, that the idea is to proceed forward into prototyping with good concepts. It can be more than one concept. And don’t be afraid to combine the best features of popular options if possible.

Typical Pitfalls

I think the most common pitfall I see is that these methods just simply aren’t used. Like totally ignored.

It’s extremely easy to get excited about a product concept; after all, it’s your baby! This excitement can blind product developers from the fact that a product needs to provide value for the customer.

Returning to customer needs, outcomes, and jobs-to-be-done over and over, and rigorously examining how a concept might deliver on those things, is key.

Remember, it’s a Concept Not a Fully Formed Product

Remember, as the PD process moves forward, the concept will evolve. We’re going to talk a lot about prototyping. Prototyping is iterative. Trust that it can and will refine your product concept into something that truly meets customer’s needs or jobs-to-be-done.

“A single design-build-test cycle generates insight and information about the connection between specific design parameters and customer attributes. That information becomes the basis for a new design-build-test cycle, and the process continues until developers arrive at a solution — a design — that meets the requirements.” Revolutionizing Product Development, p 225.

Resources

Product Management for Dummies. This book is pretty handy; I’m a fan. It is not too dissimilar to what this content is all about — easy to read nuggets on product management. Product managers are often tasked with evaluating “is this feature/product/spec better?” so there is some good content in here about evaluating concepts.

There’s a pre-made Decision Matrix provided with the book Product Management for Dummies.

Books

1. Annie Duke’s Thinking in Bets
2. Ulrich and Eppinger Textbook, per usual

Articles

Here’s a good article on dot voting.

And here is a well-detailed article on some of the downfalls of dot voting. This read is helpful in understanding what dot-voting is, a tool. And like any tool, it can be misused.

Article with a step-by-step process for using a Pugh Matrix

Click here to sign up for PDD!