What We Learned About Prototyping — Sometimes Less is More
Research, prototype, revise and repeat an ideal way to improve an idea, at least that’s what we were taught. I always thought prototyping was trying to build the actual thing, I didn’t know if we could make our idea a reality. How would I build it? How much money would I have to spend to build it? If we couldn’t build should we change our idea? These all the questions I had going into the process, but not until I told our professor our questions did I realize, none of them mattered. Well they mattered, but just not right now, not where we were at. We had to let these questions go to move forward with the project and here is what we found out about the power of prototyping.
The assignment was to create a piece of wearable technology connected to the internet of things for Kelty an outdoor lifestyle brand. We decided on BLE beacons placed strategical along trails to help you stay on track during your hike and awarding your achievements by giving you digital badges for completed hikes which you could share via social media after the hike.
We got caught up on actually creating the technology and placing them along hiking trails. But what we did instead was simply go out on a hike to act out the experience, to pretend as though they were actually there. This ran contrary to my previous definition of prototyping, but we were able to test the idea and make a few critical changes to our product, Trail Guide.
This is a great way to test out an idea with a limited amount of time and resources. Sometimes, it’s easy to get stuck on an idea, but before investing a great deal of time I’d recommend trying out your idea from a new perspective. A technique we used was google’s sprint method, sketching is where we first started. Much like testing the experience sketching allows you to quickly express an idea on paper. This allows an unbiased way to evaluate each idea, to decide on a direction and quickly move to testing and prototyping. We did some sketching for the prototype, but found our solutions to be extremely complex . We decided that actually going out and experiencing it firsthand would be a more effective way of understanding our core experience.
Who were we building this for?
This was a great way to test out our idea and in the process we figured out our core experience. When we first tackled this project we had a number of different ideas, all going in different directions. We decided to hone in on specifically the casual hiker, not the thrill-seeking hikers who chase 14ers.
Instead of adding in new features and capabilities we ended up simplifying the technology while removing features. We did this to add longevity and durability to our system. And it was also something we wouldn’t have realized sitting behind a computer in the studio. We found the longer we sat the more we wanted to add to the idea, a network of connected items all working together. It might be that we felt that by adding more we were making more progress, when were instead doing the exact opposite.
This is utterly important, and through the prototyping process an easy target to reveal. Most importantly, it was fun, a great way to get outside and out of our head for an hour or so. Especially we were working in a team, it was a great way to get on the same page. We both came to the project with our own perceptions and past experiences, something that is very difficult to overcome sitting behind a computer at a table.
In this case Yoda might have been wrong, there is a try and you should try it too before dedicating a significant amount of time to a project, we were glad we did. This is great for two reasons:
1. It keeps you from getting caught up in the how before you’ve answered the why
2. You don’t get too attached to your own particular design
If you design for yourself, it’s a lot harder to let go of an idea, a lot harder to accept criticism and a lot harder to abandon or pivot an idea. By joining your group in a prototype of the experience you have distinct evidence to site in why you think a particular feature might be needed, or useless.
What we found from going through these steps was that it was annoying to be constantly taking out your phone to tap it on the signpost. But when you did need a little help with directions it became an unintrusive method to simply tap on the trail. From going on our hike we also realized a webcam at the top of each hike put technology at the forefront of the experience. Something many people go to the outdoors to specifically escape and disconnect from.
What we decided on was to localize the map information by downloading it at the bottom trailhead. This way you could be completely off cellular and wifi. So in fact we removed a number of features from our product instead of adding on more.
If you’re considering a new product or feature, I’d highly suggest this method of prototyping. Before you start building remember prototyping can take on many forms. And having something physical may not be the only way you can try it before you go all in.
At this point in human civilization almost any idea is possible, what really matters is how long will it take to get there and how much it will cost? All of our time is valuable and all our time is precious, so before you go out and dedicate a year to your new idea, test out the experience and ask yourself really ask yourself, is this worth the time?
