The vision prototype rocket!

Create shared focus with vision prototypes

Inspire and convince teams about your product vision

For the past few months, my colleague Katie Le (Product Manager) and I (Product Designer) have been working on solving multiple end-user pain points. These problems came from numerous origins, such as customer feedback, end-user surveys, and internal ideas.

As we started to work on these, we realized that products that evolve without a vision can end up with features that no one uses or that add unnecessary complexity. To avoid this dilemma and wasting time/money, we decided to create a north star vision prototype for our area.

Vision prototypes align the team using images in addition to words

Vision prototypes have a lot of similarities with product development prototypes. Both of them serve the purpose of testing and validating our product and design ideas while getting feedback from users as they try to complete a task with an unbuilt product.

However, vision prototypes have added value in that they help the team make effective decisions in the long run and allow us to discover what the product is missing and what we shouldn’t spend time developing. If a feature is not aligned with the vision, we probably should not spend time on it.

Lastly, high-fidelity vision prototypes help communicate our ideas to the executive team and other stakeholders. While decks help show the business goals, prototypes show concrete visuals that get everyone on the same page.

Creating the prototype is only half the battle

We started creating a list of the critical long terms problems that our prototype is looking to solve. Once we had a list of problems, we jointly picked the top solutions that we wanted everyone to visualize. This list quickly became very long, and we had to pick the most abstract or controversial ideas that would most benefit from having a visual.

Along the way, we reached out to other leaders across corporate development, product marketing, and partnerships to collaborate on ideas. It was key to get buy-in from adjacent organizations so that by the time it got to executives, everyone already felt a part of the solution.

Next, Katie and I validated our prototype with real customers and end-users. Since this was meant to be a long-term vision, it was hard to get the right level of feedback from our users, so we crafted our questions to be high-level rather than detail-oriented.

Katie created a deck to outline problems, business goals, and success metrics, and I created a vision prototype. This was only half the battle, though. We spent the next 3 months socializing our vision deck and prototypes.

Lessons learned

• Allocate time to develop your vision. It took longer than expected — we spent 1 month iterating and designing, and then several months socializing it. Once we did, it was easier to make product decisions because everything we designed, tested, and developed was aligned with our north star.
• Build a case to get more people working on your project. When executives understood our long-term plan, it was easier to get the time and people we needed to make it happen.
• Avoid focusing on the details. While we wanted the vision prototype to feel real and polished, it was essential to focus on the big picture and the overall story we were trying to tell. We knew we’d have time to develop the little details and flows once the vision was approved.
• Make your deck short and concise. Our deck ended up having too many slides in it to start (40+). We had to distill it down into an 8-slide deck, with the prototype, that fit into a 20-minute presentation.
• Start off with a written vision document, which the PM can drive. We are fans of long-form writing and the clarity it requires you to have. If you can create the long-form doc, the deck and vision prototypes will come more easily.

Recipe

When you set out to create a vision for your product area, try incorporating a vision prototype in your presentation to get a shared understanding.

Ingredients

1. A note tool to brainstorm about the key scenarios you want to include. We used Miro, but any documentation or note-taking tool could work.
2. A design tool that has prototyping capabilities. We used Figma, but there are great options out there, like Figma or Adobe XD.
3. At least 5 users or customers to validate your ideas with. You can have more, but you start to recognize patterns after 5 users.
4. A presentation tool to show your ideas, prototypes, and findings. We used Google Slides since it’s really easy to share and collaborate, but there are some great options out there.

Instructions

1. Brainstorm the top 3 to 5 opportunities that are crucial to showing the critical functionality of your product using a note/brainstorm tool. Don’t focus on the details; instead, think 5 years from now.
2. Identify your personas and write the most important tasks they will have to complete a task in the same brainstorm tool.
3. Draw one or multiple user flows that show the key tasks. Focus on the high-level strokes, not on the details.
4. Create a polished prototype without focusing too much on the details, and make sure the flows are clearly prototyped and represented.
5. Validate your prototype with your customers or end-users. Record the sessions.
6. Create a deck that touches on opportunities, why these opportunities are worth solving right now, and success metrics. Add your vision prototype to the end.
7. Socialize with relevant stakeholders.

Thanks for reading our recipe. Our goal is to share our experiences working together using a short-read format with instructions that you can try on your own — just like a cookbook. We hope you found it useful!

Katie Le & Nicolas Backal