Best Practices to Build your Physical Prototype
Apply these best practices right and get the most out of your product‘s prototype.
Too often we rush into building an initial version of our product without really knowing what exactly we want to learn or validate once is completed.
We need clarity on what we want to achieve.
We must define our approach before building something that is going to take us time and resources. You probably have a limited amount of those two so it is wise to use them effectively.
Define Clear Goals
The very first thing is to define a clear goal for your prototype. It should be a specific goal that you can clearly validate once the prototype is completed.
What is that you are looking to get out of this prototype?
Whether it is validating your concept idea, testing a specific feature of the product or getting feedback from users, the goal should provide answers.
It might help to use a particular use case of your prototype to visualize the situation in which you or your users will interact with the prototype.
Link Product Features to Requirements
In order to achieve the goal that you have defined, list down which particular features from your product you must include in the prototype.
Not all features are equally important.
You may have a big list of features for your product, however, many won’t make it to the final version (and it shouldn’t). You will choose the ones that are a priority and relevant to the goal that you are trying to achieve.
Add features as your product and prototypes evolve.
Next, you should define the requirements to build those features into your prototype. The requirements are driven by the relevant features and they are linked to each other. Do not add requirements that don’t have a purpose that is aligned with the features.
The requirements must be measurable.
If you can’t measure the requirements, then you can’t verify that they are met. They should have a clear target value or range that will allow you to verify and compare results.
Set Up a Testing Plan
There are many different ways you can confirm that your prototype has met your goals. As with any experiment, we define some tests and compare the results to our expected outcome.
Perform tests to verify that your requirements are met.
Define a list of tests that you will perform in the prototype to confirm if its goal is achieved. Tests can be user interviews to gather feedback or more technical tests to verify a specific parameter of your prototype. Electrical safety, exposure to high and low temperatures, water immersion, exposure to sunlight, are just a few examples of technical tests.
Do not overcomplicate tests, especially with early prototypes.
As your product evolves you would likely need to perform exhaustive tests done in professional labs. It will ultimately depend on your product and industry what sort of tests you will require. However, early tests should be done using available resources and simple tools. Look around your garage and get creative.
Introducing the Build Canvas
In order to facilitate the use of those 3 best practices, we have created a one-pager called the Build Canvas, which will help you compile this information in a single document that is easy to manage and keep updated.
The Build Canvas is a light and friendly tool to organize your product builds.
All the elements that I mentioned earlier are present in the canvas so you can easily create your own and see how they relate to each other. The document can be filled in quickly so you don’t use much time on this task and it can be updated as you gather new insights. There is a section at the right to include materials and components that you will need to build your prototype and estimated costs to keep track of your budget.
Put It into Practice
Those were the 3 basic elements that you will need to get right at the beginning to build a successful prototype from which you can learn as much as possible for your final product. It all comes to having a clear and specific goal, understanding the features and requirements that will make the goal achievable and defining the criteria that you will use to assess your result.
Use our Build Canvas tool to implement this approach easily and keep information brief and accessible for your prototype build. Use your time and resources efficiently and progress in your development with confidence.
(Build Your Physical Product in Short Cycles with our Free Email Course)
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.
If you want to read more stories like this one visit our publication page
