How to Build an Effective Prototype

Suppose you’ve just come up with your next great idea. What if you could revolutionize an entire industry by turning current ideas on their head? What if you could solve a problem that no one even realized they had?

What if your idea could change the world?

Well, we have good news: it can. But whatever idea you have, you’ll need to test it, or risk building something no one will use.

The best way to test your idea is to develop a basic prototype of your vision. A prototype is basically just a stripped-down version of whatever you’re trying to create. These prototypes don’t have to be anything fancy — we actually build most of our first product designs out of sturdy cardboard or foam. At the end of the prototyping process, you will have tested your key assumptions in the fastest, cheapest way possible, and your product will be proven and ready to take on the world.

Now, let’s explore some of the biggest benefits of the prototyping process.

Explore Multiple Design Directions

Models made from cardboard, foam, or other scrap materials are great prototypes because they allow you to explore multiple design directions without wasting resources. They require minimal effort to create, yet offer enough of a concrete form for you and your test users to interact with and critique openly.

As an example, check out the first box designs we created with Nicotrax, a cigarette cessation company who we worked with to develop a hardware and software solution to smoking. We were able to explore different ideas and features in the span of a day, got them in users’ hands, and immediately narrowed down the strongest design directions. If we had developed full 3D printed models, this could have taken us weeks.

Test Assumptions About Your Market

The most important thing to remember about the prototyping process is that you are testing a hypothesis — sometimes as simple as “people will use what I’m making because <x>.” Each prototype you build should be designed to test this statement, and nothing more. Targeting your development in this way makes sure you get the most out of your time and materials.

Without a hypothesis in place, you have nothing to guide your development, and it’s easier to experience what we call scope creep. Scope creep happens when you build too many features into your product that distract from your goal, and typically happens over long stretches of time. Your main goal is to prove or disprove your hypothesis as fast as possible: to do this, you have to resist the urge to explore too many new ideas at once.

As an example of this practice, most of our frontend software development begins with a series of UI mockups in an app called Invision. This lets us link together screenshots designed in Illustrator so people can click buttons just like a real application, without the work of coding an entire webpage. We use these prototypes to get our design in front of users, and refine it before putting in time to develop the full product.

Quickly Build on Proven Concepts

Once you’ve created a basic design people like, it’s time to build a functional prototype. When we build prototypes at DXLab, we don’t like reinventing the wheel. We use existing technologies when we can, applied in innovative ways. After all, we need to make sure we’re building the right thing before we go to work on building it right.

When exploring how to build your prototype, you should do some research to figure out how you want to build it. Cheap hardware platforms like Arduino and Raspberry Pi let you fast-forward to tech development without worrying about custom boards. Tools like Parse and Bootstrap give you building blocks to quickly develop the foundation of your software. 3D printing can help you manufacture physical products with minimal expense, as well.

You can even use competing products as prototypes! Other companies have gone through this same process to develop their products, so it makes sense to leverage their efforts. Using these products lets you test your hypotheses without any development in some cases — and if you do have to modify these products, you can at least avoid starting from scratch. In any case, competitors can offer a great shortcut in the prototyping process.

Get Feedback, Fast!

Once you’ve built a prototype, it’s time to put it in people’s hands. Doing user testing before putting significant effort into development cuts down on wasted time. You can also see how people use your product and pinpoint flaws in your design, letting you build better versions based on this feedback.

User feedback is a critical part of what’s known as the Build-Measure-Learn feedback cycle. This iterative feedback process is just what it sounds like: you build on a previous version of your product, measure results of user testing, and learn what to do next. Using this framework will help you organize your efforts and create the best product you possibly can.

Choosing the right people to test your prototype is important, as well: you ideally want feedback from people who will be the end users of your final product. Like every other part of the prototyping process, this should be a targeted effort to test your hypothesis. While outside opinions can help in some stages of the ideation process, you need to target your testing to ensure your design will serve your market as well as possible.

Now, Let’s Build Something Awesome.

While also being incredibly useful, prototyping is a lot of fun: you get to build your ideas in the fastest way possible, and see people using it as soon as possible. It’s easy to get carried away, but these tips should help you focus your efforts and create the “next big thing.”

Let us know your thoughts on the best prototyping methods you’ve used, or cool ideas you’ve created!