Meet the 6 Heroes that will Transform your Idea into a Real Product

Discover the 6 prototype versions that will help you defeat your fears and start building your product idea.

There are times when you just can’t fight on your own the threats that come with building your idea. When you are facing such an intimidating task as taking your idea from concept to manufacturing, having powerful allies with the right skills can be a game changer. But knowing how to use each of their skills at the right time for the right purpose is your most critical advantage.

Meet the heroes

Take Marvel’s original six Avengers and how their varied skills and powers help them tackle the biggest threats humanity faces. Your goal might seem more humble but it is your dream at stake here.

Let’s take a look at the original six Avengers and their abilities:

1. Hawkeye. Agile and versatile with exceptional endurance and stamina.
2. Black Widow. Beauty in movement. No superhuman abilities but ultimate human levels of strength, agility, and stamina.
3. Hulk. Superhuman strength and durability in a giant green monster.
4. Thor. His famous hammer and capability to use thunder and lightning provide him with the greatest abilities. He has a Godly presence with a certain roughness of ancient times.
5. Captain America. He is a reliable ally. His stunning speed and powerful shield are his biggest assets.
6. Iron Man. Brings pure high tech solutions to problems with an armored suit for strength and durability.

But you know that those are just fantasy… Now let’s meet the real 6 heroes that will take your idea from concept to mass production:

1. Proof of Concept Level. Agility and versatility to quickly test your idea.
2. Design Level. Brings the product’s aesthetics and basic features with limited functional capabilities.
3. Functional prototype. All the functional features and full capabilities in an “ugly” body.
4. Engineering Level. Combines aesthetics with functionality, but still needs a bit of polishing for production.
5. Small Scale Level. Production like prototype using rapid tools to verify quality and repeatability.
6. Production Level. Using final production tooling and technology for a fully functional finished product.

Despite the obvious similarities, our 6 heroes only purpose is to make your product idea evolve continuously in different levels of maturity until it is ready for mass production, so we have named them Product Levels (“Avengers” was already taken).

As the product evolves through the different levels it increases in detail and features as we approach production readiness. However, the main characteristic of the product levels is that each one represents working or functional versions of the product that can be used for a particular purpose, as opposed to being isolated subsystems or partial products.

Heroes Abilities

Now let’s look at each of those Product Levels in a bit more detail and what is the purpose of each one of them.

Proof of Concept Level

The Proof of Concept (POC) is mainly used for when products introduce new innovations and technologies. The main goal is to validate your solution and concept before investing too much time and effort (and money) in fully designing your solution. The main idea of building a POC is to validate in the simplest form and as fast as possible that your concept works and it’s what users need. So, it is common to use readily available products and off-the-shelf components that have similar functionalities as your product and adapt them to your needs.

Design Level

A Design version is a great way to validate usability and aesthetics quickly. In some cases the prototype has some basic functionality especially if it is important to evaluate user interaction, but unless it is really necessary the prototype is built without integrating any functionality of the product yet so you can move faster.

Functional Level

With this product version, you are aiming to validate the main functionality of your product so it is recommended that you layout the main functional components in a setup that is not constrained by the volume of the final product. As you can imagine, the aesthetics here are not a concern so these prototypes won’t look anything like the final product.

Engineering Level

Combine both of previous concepts, aesthetics, and functionality in a single version. The purpose then is to verify the technical feasibility of the complete design including enclosures and how everything is assembled together and identify any limitations. The prototype starts to look more like the final product but it might still need “help” holding parts together and get by with rough finishes.

Small Scale Level

Here we are aiming to verify the product viability in terms of manufacturing repeatability and costs. It might still not fully represent the final production methods and will use more like rapid production tools to get a small scale manufacturing setup.

This would be the right time for you to launch a crowdfunding campaign or look for funding in preparation for the high costs of production tooling plus orders of raw materials and components to start production.

Production Level

For these level’s samples, we use final production processes, tools and types of equipment to validating the production readiness and the quality standards of the product. All tooling and production processes are tested in production runs to make sure everything is ready to start mass production.

Face the challenge

You have met our 6 heroes but how can you actually start using these “superpowers” to your benefit. We have described below some steps to get you started with our approach.

First, you can plan which product levels you will use for your product and how many iterations you estimate you will build for each. Try to fit each of those builds inside a fixed time-frame of between 4–8 weeks (with 4 weeks recommended). It is important that you go one step at a time, focus on building one prototype iteration first and set up the scene. We have created a simple tool to help you with that using the following information:

1. Define specific goals for your prototype prior to each build
2. Define the minimum features that meet the goals
3. Identify suitable tests to confirm those the features and goals
4. Define requirements and specifications to build your prototype
5. List the required materials and estimated costs for your build

Start from the top left corner and fill in each item as you move through the canvas (from left to right). This simple template will get you focused on what you need to do on each build and keep everyone on the same page.

Get free access to this template and more resources.

We have introduced a simple approach for you to apply with your product idea, now it is your time to make the next move. Don’t be afraid, your idea is in safe hands with the help of these heroes and our action plan.

If you want to know more about our approach and how we put that into practice, follow us and read our full 3 part article here.

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Abilista guides innovators to develop their product ideas from concept, prototyping and all the way to manufacturing following our own step by step framework. We are already helping several entrepreneurs and startups to build their ideas by giving them access to simple and agile tools and expertise on-demand.

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