Prototyping is not a concept reserved strictly for architects, engineers, or product and service designers. I truly believe that you can prototype anything. From startups ideas to office space arrangements. Dinner parties to healthy diet routines. The essence of prototyping is to progress in an iterative way. As fast and as efficiently as possible.
A fundament of innovation
Along with brainstorming and observation, prototyping is a fundament of innovation. David Kelley, co-founder of the Stanford d.school, calls this process “enlightened trial and error”.
The goal is to progress quickly with iterative cycles of building, testing and reflecting. Cycling through multiple quick iterations lets you make mistakes, and find the solutions to these issues as soon as possible.
Why bother actually building a prototype? Why not simply describe or explain the product instead? Well, because making your ideas tangible is a great way to gather feedback. Whenever possible, show, don’t tell. Even a simple prototype can communicate more than explaining while waving your hands in the air, hoping that the person you are speaking to will grasp the idea.
“We believe in that great old saying, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Only at IDEO, we’ve found that a good prototype is worth a thousand pictures.”The art of innovation, Tom Kelley
Keep it rough
When you start working on a project, your initial solutions to a problem are often abstract. Many aspects might need validation. By leveraging a low resolution, you can avoid heavy expenses early on.
Keeping a low fidelity makes it also easier for your testers. I often failed to get valuable feedback from users because they were afraid of hurting my feelings. Presenting a polished refined prototype that looks like it was very time consuming to prepare might be a barrier for open critique. But nobody’s scared of commenting on a quick sketch. And even better – 10 quick sketches leaves you with various alternatives, even if several are rejected.
I believe it’s a good practice to match the resolution of your prototype with the resolution of your ideas about the problem being solved. Don’t go a thousand kilometers ahead with an idea before you are sure of the first mile You start with the lowest resolution possible, you explore a concept and then you refine it with every iteration.
Do you know what was used by IDEO as an early prototype for the first Apple mouse? A butter dish. Or more precisely a butter dish, spools of guitar wire, toy train wheels and a roller ball taken from underarm deodorant. This is what I call low resolution!
Don’t rush into expensive and time consuming 3D modeling and fine materials. You can express your ideas cheaply and quickly with basic components that surround you in your everyday life. Don’t let the urge to look ‘professional’ come before the efficacy of the product. ’
You might be surprised how often the simplest solutions are the best. One of my favorite examples is the project developed for Wells Fargo. The bank requested IDEO to solve the problem of an uncomfortable or even fearful experience when you’re withdrawing money from an ATM – for example the worry that somebody is shadowing you.
Was a high-tech solution necessary? A camera, periscope, motion sensors? Not really. It turned out that a $1.80 fish-eye mirror sticked above the ATM worked just fine. Nowadays we’re so used to this solution that it seems quite obvious.
What are the best solutions to your problem?
It’s sometimes hard to find the simplest and most evident answers, but it’s definitely worth making an effort to explore them.
Besides simplicity and quick validation, low resolution has another crucial advantage. When it’s time to select one solution among many, rough prototypes make it easy for your budget (and your ego!!) to let them go.
Kill your babies
We often get attached to our ideas. The best practice in prototyping is to start with a large pool of prototypes and narrow them down over time as your solution becomes more refined.
It’s difficult! At least for me it’s one of the toughest parts. Divergent thinking and developing multiple solutions is fun. Convergent thinking and limiting the solution space step by step can be a real challenge.
Stephen King once gave a great advice about writing and refining your writing drafts (paraphrasing William Cuthbert Faulkner, an American writer and Nobel Prize laureate):
“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”
Early ideas have many flaws and you don’t want to stick to them for too long. Don’t be afraid to let them go.
Build a environment for low fidelity
I often get to work for big companies, with complex hierarchical structures, located in beautiful luxurious office spaces where everything is so clean and flawless (btw luxurious spaces in Qatar really deserve a separate post!). And this is often reflected in the work style expectations. Polished refined projects get presented to the key decision makers at the very last stage of their development. And guess what – quite often these key decision makers are not pleased with them. To be honest, I’m not surprised.
If you’re working on a product or service, try to create an environment where low fidelity prototypes are OK. Explain the iterative approach. Ignore the often lengthy deadline – they don’t necessarily help. Train your client (or your boss) that you’ll be around to get iterative feedback often along the way.
Some organizations might not be used to such an approach, but for the last 10 years I haven’t met a single client that was not convinced that it was the right way to go once we reached the end of the process.
No such thing as a failed prototype
Your prototype didn’t work? Or maybe it was poorly received?
Don’t worry – the prototypes are not precious, contrary to the lessons learnt from them. A “failed” prototype can sometimes bring more insight that successful experiments that only validate a previous assumption, but don’t bring new discoveries.
“I have not failed. I have merely found ten thousand ways that won’t work.”
Thomas Edison
It might seem counterintuitive, but I would like to encourage you to prototype solutions that you think might not work as well. Sometimes just for the sake of shooting them down faster and making space for new concepts. Sometimes for making new discoveries and building on top of ideas that only initially seemed wrong.
If you put a small price on failure and prototype at low resolution, it’s definitely worth giving a try.
Time is precious
Back in 1994 Jeff Bezos came across a statistic that inspired him to revolutionize e-commerce. He heard a prediction that annual Web growth would exceed 2,300 percent.
When a market is growing 2,300% a year, each day counts. And Jeff knew he had to act fast. He started making a list of things he could sell online. He settled on books and within weeks quit his Wall Street job, hired a moving van, packed all his family’s belongings and asked the driver to head west. Where was the van going?
BEZOS DIDN’T KNOW.
How could a moving van begin its journey without knowing the final destination? When the van departed, Bezos new the “low-fidelity” answer – west. The next day he decided on Seattle, a city renown for it’s high-tech workers.
Breaking a problem into smaller tasks and making decision on the fly is the essence of rapid prototyping. This innovative approach gave him a business edge. Time is precious – sort out the pieces of the puzzle as early as possible. Sometimes you need to take actions before knowing all the answers. You will stumble a couple of times, but eventually you’ll get it right.
Repeat
No idea is so good that it can’t be improved. Incremental improvements allow you to fail often to succeed sooner. Embrace these mini failures – they are valuable learning experience 😉
Research and expertise are worthwhile approaches, but hands on experiences are often a faster (and more fun!!) way to learn and make your ideas tangible.
Pick an idea, a process, a part of your life. Create a solution, test it. reflect. And repeat. I promise over time and iterations you’ll succeed.