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Rapid prototyping Google Glass - Tom Chi

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Rapid prototyping is a method used to accelerate the innovation process. At TEDYouth 2012, Tom Chi explains how this method was used to create one of Google’s newest inventions, Google Glass.

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When discussing the concept of pretotyping with someone new, we often get asked the question: "Wait . . don't you mean 'prototyping'?"

We get that it can be confusing, and so we'd like to clear it up.

To start, let us give you some definitions:

Prototype: A first or preliminary version of a device, product or vehicle from which other forms are developed.
"...the first, original, or typical form of something; an archetype"
Pretotype: A rapid experiment that aims to test ideas quickly, simply, and at low cost, gathering data in order to validate ideas before building a prototype.
Often run in a series, building on the learnings from each previous pretotype experiment to test each element of the proposed product.
A prototype asks the question: CAN we build it? The answer is yes, it's 2021. We can build anything!

By comparison, a pretotype asks: SHOULD we build it? This question requires some deeper investigation, so let's dive in.

The Prototype

As you can see from the definition above (taken from the Oxford English dictionary), a prototype is the first version of a product from which copies and following editions are made. The main objective of prototyping is to answer questions that arise around the building of a product. These include questions like:

Whilst prototypes are an important and very necessary step in the product development process, they're often created without any validated data to show whether or not anyone will even want the product once it has been built. They're also often created based on Other People's Data (OPD), which is something we believe should be avoided at all cost.

This is because what works for others may not work for you. You should only trust your own data, or YODA as we like to call it (yes, we're obsessed with Star Wars, but who isn't?) because it relates directly to your product and was collected by you. This also gives you visibility across every step of the process, providing specific insight about your customers based on exactly what you are trying to test.

To fill the gap created by jumping straight to a prototype and to answer the question of whether anyone will actually use it, pretotyping should be used before the prototype is created. While it might seem counterintuitive to pause the process and take valuable time to run rapid experiments at the start, we promise it'll save you time, money and resources in the long run.

The Pretotype

Unlike a prototype, a pretotype isn't a thing so much as it is a mini-experiment, designed with the aim of testing an idea quickly, simply and at a very low cost. Pretotyping asks you to break your idea down to its smallest possible testable form and run an experiment to see if anyone will use the product. You can then use these learnings to run additional pretotypes until you have enough of Your Own ( validated) at to prove it is worth it to build the thing.

Where prototyping focuses on questions relating to the construction of a product, pretotyping focuses on its appeal and usage, asking questions like:

Will people be interested in it?

Will they use it the way we expect?

Will it solve their problem?

Will they use it more than once?

One of the most famous examples of pretotyping is that of the Palm Pilot. When he had the idea for this product, the founder of Palm Computing, Jeff Hawkins, didn't rush to build the device. He ran pretotypes to make sure that a) the product would work functionally and b) that people would actually want to buy and use them. He did this by mocking up a Palm Pilot using pieces of wood and paper, carrying it around for a few weeks and "using" it to see if it was valuable and to test other people's interest in it.

Whilst he didn't know it at the time (because Alberto Savoia hadn't invented the name "Pretotyping" yet), Hawkins was demonstrating a perfect example of a pretotype - an experiment using the smallest possible investment of time and money to see if the product would actually work.

Pretotype + Prototype = 🏆

As we've mentioned above, pretotyping and prototyping are actually best placed when used together, one after the other. When you have an idea, pretotyping can be used to test each element of the proposed product, creating your own collectable data and letting you know if it's even worth building in the first place. The process also allows you to test many different elements of the potential product; this means you will emerge with the best possible plan as well as considerable data that could be useful when it comes to creating the prototype.

Once the pretotypes have all been run, the data collected and analysed and the evidence-based decision made, then it's time to build the prototype, which will be all the better for the time taken to pretotype it in the first place.

Want to learn more about Pretotyping? Visit our website to read about how we've helped companies like PEXA and AGL successfully implement pretotyping within their innovation processes, or sign up for a free preview of our online 'Learn Pretotyping' course.

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Pretotyping vs. Prototyping - Exponentially

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When discussing the concept of pretotyping with someone new, we often get asked the question: "Wait . . don't you mean 'prototyping'?" We get that it can be confusing, and so we'd like to clear it up. To start, let us give you some definitions: Prototype: A first or preliminary version of a device, product or vehicle from which other forms are developed.

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Stanford Seminar - Build The Right It, Alberto Savoia of Google

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The process of prototyping itself can be divided into several steps, which are different for both software and hardware prototyping. Here, we'll discuss hardware prototyping stages.

In each of the different stages, you'll construct different kinds of prototypes to create a concrete foundation for your product development.

Hardware prototyping can be divided into 3 stages with different types of prototypes:

1. Proof of concept

2. Looks-like and Works-like Prototype

3. Engineering Prototype

1. Proof of Concept

The first step of prototyping is to create a proof of concept (POC). Depending on how you do your project management, one team can have one or more proof of concepts to aid with the project discussion.

Exactly like its name, the proof of concept model is made only to display the concept of the product you're making. The model developed at this stage wouldn't be able to stand alone, you'll need to explain every part of the model, on how it's describing your concepts.

A proof of concept should be designed with the aim to create a model structure for the internal team for internal goal alignment. The model should be a visualization aid for your team to understand the target project outcome.

In the process of constructing a POC, take your time to explore the potential risks and difficulties you'll be facing with your chosen technology. Analyze also the potential of the model you're making.

A POC model doesn't need to show exactly how your product would look like or work like. It simply just has to represent the main structural features and working mechanism of your project. You can simply make your proof of concept from Lego, since they're easy to put together and build, tweak, or dismantle.

Differential Gear Lego Prototype

The above example shows a Lego proof-of-concept of a differential gear application with a pair of wheels. The model is able to demonstrate the functionality of the differential gears, their construction, and the rotation of the wheels to be used in the actual model (which could be a vehicle). As you move forward with your project, you'll find yourself looking back to refer to your proof-of-concept model. This will keep you aligned with your goals, and assist you in configuring the core mechanism of your product.

2. Looks-like and Works-like Prototypes

Looks-like prototypes are also known as appearance prototypes. They are constructed to give a physical representation of how the end product should look like. Looks-like prototypes should be able to illustrate the size, shape, and key structures of the final product. They don't necessarily need to be able to mechanically move, much less function.

Creating a looks-like prototype can be done with various materials based on your budget, time, and aesthetic target. You can make it simply by using cardboard or clay for a cheaper alternative or just as a starting point. Then, if you want to create more sophisticated parts, you could construct your product with 3D printing. Larger models and models made out of metals can be prototyped using CNC machining processes such as milling, cutting, and drilling.

A works-like prototype, on the other hand, is a prototype that is made to demonstrate the workflow of the final product. Thus, it cares very little about the appearance of the product. The works-like prototype will have to show the mechanism of its mechanical and/or electrical features, which means it needs to be constructed from several different parts.

For mechanical hardware products, material selection plays a huge role in the prototyping process. Selecting the right material combination to give the required flexibility, strength, ductility, and manufacturing capabilities will be one of the most crucial steps. It's alright if you don't make it right the first time, it's normal for prototyping to take several iterations for a satisfactory outcome.

Similarly, dealing with an electrical works-like prototype will also require different factors. This involves the selection of different devices and components to create the system. Devices such as microcontroller boards, sensors, antennas, cameras, or monitors should be adjusted according to your final product's target size, power requirements, working conditions, and budget. At this stage, you'll also need to decide which parts are going to be sourced from off-the-shelf components, and which parts should be custom designed.

Let's run a scenario. For example, you're doing a prototype of a device very similar to Baronbrew's Tilt Hydrometer,

Prototyping the looks-like prototype will include the product's structural design, making sure its size and shape fit on distilling chambers. Design should also be made internally to keep the parts inside steady and waterproof. Thus, the choice of materials also a huge role in constructing a looks-like prototype.

Next, configuring the works-like prototype will involve testing how the system could convey accurate data, such as temperature and pressure, from the sensors to the user interface. At the same time, a floating mechanism to keep the device level should also be configured in the works-like prototype. The process will be a continuous iteration process, hence you might start by using development boards and sensors, before ending up with a custom-made module.

Looks-like

Works-like

Purpose

Illustrate shape, size, and structures

Demonstrate product workflow

Components

Generally uses custom-made parts

Mostly uses off-the-shelf parts, with a combination of custom parts

Parts

Made from clay, cardboard, 3D printing, etc.

Include breadboards, circuit boards, wiring, sensors, motor, etc.

3. Engineering Prototype

The end product of the integration of a looks-like and a works-like prototype is this engineering prototype. An engineering prototype would be expected to look like your final product, except it's going to look more unfinished and the performance might just not be as good.

The process of creating an engineering prototype, or works-like looks-like prototype, requires back-and-forth alterations. Continuous improvements should be taken to solve the problem. At times, you should compromise your functionality for the looks of your model, or compromise the aesthetics of your product for the product's purpose.

The engineering prototype you get at the end of this prototyping process can be used as your Beta Prototype, which is the prototype you show to investors to showcase your project plan to gain more funding.

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Hardware startups, as you move forward from brainstorming to making your project into reality, you'll have to plunge into the prototyping field.

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Low fidelity prototype testing of the EE app

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A week or two prior to this posting, I did an AI experiment to pretotype how capable ChatGPT was at writing code and wrote about it on LinkedIn. AI's ability to code was unsurprising, everyone's talking about it. But for some (or perhaps many) the concept of a pretotype was - surprising that is.

"Pretotype? Don't you mean 'Prototype' Adam?"

NO. I meant Pretotype. And for those unfamiliar with the concept, it is a term coined by Alberto Savoia in his groundbreaking (yes, really groundbreaking) book "The Right It". Savoia is the Founder and Innovation Agitator at Pretotype Labs, a former Innovation Lecturer at Stanford, and also the former Engineering Director and Innovation Agitator at Google Labs.

In Safi Bahcall's book, Loonshots, he talks about the concept of a Product Champion. To summarize, in my opinion, who exactly Alberto Savoia is - you might consider him as an Innovation Champion wherever and whenever innovation is to be done. His is the type of career I aspire to most.

As for the book, and why "groundbreaking." And perhaps - why groundbreaking NOW moreso than ever before. Well, for many, the idea of a Minimum Viable Product (or perhaps the Minimum Viable Prototype) are often what we think of, and aim for, when pursuing the birth of a new idea or product. The problem is: that many ideas are insanely time consuming to work on... EVEN if you're only aiming for an MVP. In Savoia's book, we are reminded and confronted with the idea that time is finite, and whatever thing you are working on also represents the opportunity cost of whatever else you cannot work on.

A mantra you may have heard: " THE IDEA MIGHT BE GREAT, BUT MAY NOT BE GREAT FOR YOU." is a theme covered in this book. Pretotyping will help you identify not only if an idea is good, but how capable you are to bring it to life.

The Right It introduces you to a methodology of battle testing an idea long before you find yourself trapped in a Sisyphean cycle of trying to bring an MVP to life. You learn the value of doing your own research, and why. And more importantly, how doing your own research (as opposed to depending on studies) can protect you from wandering into "Thought Land". A place where unicorns (no, not the companies) coexist with Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and your idea is brilliant.

Key points of Pretotyping include testing them fast with the smallest possible investment, to determine if an idea is even worth pursuing. The emphasis is on what you can learn to improve faster. Pretotpying helps you cover ground quickly in order to uncover what the best/most appealing version of your idea is. But, a Pretotype does not exist in a vacuum. It is the thing, a mock-up, a simulation, or even offering (perhaps for something that does not exist) that is just enough to test your assumption that you are on the right track. To be successful with Pretotyping, you'll want to make sure that your experiment helps you better understand your value proposition, the features, pricing, target market, and demand. You will be most successful with Pretotyping by embracing an experimental mindset, a willingness to be wrong (and recognize it) and the ability to embrace failure as an opportunity to learn and iterate.

OKAY... but, how is this groundbreaking? If you're familiar with certain business concepts like Agile, or Lean, you may appreciate that you can be iteratively working towards the perfect MVP, and "doing everything right", only to discover... you never should've began in the first place... that the idea itself was wrong. What's more is the emphasis on doing your own research. While some may frown on you doing your own research: you don't have a complete dataset, perhaps you aren't "qualified", etc ... for me The Right It will give you the permission to disregard the generalized expert studies that cost more than you can afford to build your idea, and in a very basic way. It would seem that to master Pretotyping, you must also have an intimate understanding of your customer. If you're familiar with the work of Amy Jo Kim, you may already be on board with the concept of the "Super Fan".

Pretotyping will help you discover and understand your "Super Fan."
As an aside, it seems all too often that companies, individuals, groups, and our leaders politicians get together in a room, or by themselves and decide with the "best research" from "the best consultancy" what's right for everyone, without ever stopping to ask ANYONE. When a company encounters a boycott, or no one cares, an individual or group's idea goes nowhere, or the citizens revolt - it is likely because the "best research in the land" was scrubbed of the outliers, sanitized for expensive consumption, and packaged moreso as research to reassure, than research to guide.
The Right It can also be applied in your own life, for it shows you how distill an idea to its essentials and test it. Though the book is primarily for finding the Right It in terms of a product or service, the type of thinking and tactics used can modified and applied to anything that required a commitment of time in the face of uncertainty.

As something of a PS. I said earlier that I thought this was perhaps more groundbreaking now than ever before, that is because in the book AI Superpowers by Kai-Fu Lee, he talks about AI bringing about something of a creative boom - where the future may belong to the people capable of using tools most creatively and effectively, not necessarily those building the tools. (although obviously, from a financial perspective, building the best tools is an epic pursuit). Those capable of Pretotyping, I believe will be those best positioned to fulfill Kai-Fu Lee's vision.

Graphic Novel Business Pretotype Experiment with Midjourney AI

If you've been following Midjourney and other A.I. art tools, you may be wowed by the characters and artwork it creates, and if you're business minded... you might have thought: "this artwork is AMAZING. But, can it generate re-usable characters on the fly? Enough that I could use it to create an entire book or a graphic novel?"

You have probably seen a few posts on LinkedIn or floating around the internet where someone says "I wrote a book with ChatGPT and illustrated it with Midjourney". Often, it seems impressive until you see the results. While the story might not be awful, and the artwork is usually stunning - it is often stunning individually, but not in the context of a uniform story. Though Midjourney CRUSHES it when it comes to one off images, a story with a recurring character doesn't seem doable out of the box. It also seems to do poorly, typically, with crowd scenes. The "continuous" works I've seen with Midjourney, so far, either appear to require a dreamlike story to account and excuse blurry nightmare faces and character inconsistencies, OR require excessive seeding which requires regenerating an image over an over until you believe Midjourney can reliably create that say image in a different context.

For me, my thought was, could I do a graphic novel or something sellable with Midjourney out of the box? Something beyond a one off, or "Midjourney Avatar Calendar".

I didn't want to spend too much time mastering seeding (it also seemed like it could exhaust credits on the cheapest plan) and I also did not want to deal with Midjourney generating artwork so masterful that if I needed to tinker, would I be totally incapable of producing similar result. Likewise, I did not want to do something so basic that it defeats the purpose of using a tool as powerful as Midjourney.

Therein came some base assumptions on a workaround for Midjourney out of the box:

Use Manga, because most Manga Characters look Similar

Do it in Black and White, because it narrows the options, and two tones are easier to modify in the event that I needed to mess around in Adobe Photoshop.

The biggest thought/concern was how to do a character that looks essentially the same, without using seeding.

I assumed that Midjourney should/would know what a well known celebrity would look like because of the data it is trained on. I also assumed that aside from using only "manga" in the prompt along with a well known celebrity's name, I might also get better results if I said "in the style of Famous Manga Artist X". I was very pleasantly surprised. Other things to specify were "length of hair" and also what the character is/was wearing. In my example below, which I think is more extensive in terms of individual frames than other examples I have seen, you will notice - upon examination - that the clothing is not entirely consistent, nor is the car, or the jewelry. In some cases, the character has weapons, in others not. However, in the chaos and action of what is taking place in a given panel, the cutaways and so forth - I think I've proven the case that this could be a viable way to do a Graphic Novel.

But would be grateful to know what you think.

I spent less than 8 hours to generate all the images and create the panels in photoshop. It took about 3.5 hours for the panels, because I did that consecutively. I also used ChatGPT and gave brief descriptions of panels and asked it to give me lines of dialogue to use with each description. I didn't use it all verbatim, but it served as a half-decent starting point to avoid writer's block. Lastly, as for the story line, I thought of the theft sequence in the movie True Lies and used that as basic inspiration for 5 Act Structure: Act 1 - The Setup, Act 2: The Party, Act 3: The Theft, Act 4: The Escape, Act 5: Resolution. There are a total of approximately 75 images below. Some were spawned simultaneously by Midjourney.
If you're reading this and know anything about creating Graphic Novels or artwork, I would be grateful to know how far you think this might be from a finished product, and also how long it would take do what is below without AI. Please ping me on LinkedIn to let me know.
Lastly, I used Miyazawa Rie, in the style of Tsutomo Nihei with the -niji 5 flag, along with manga, black and white, ink, and ultra detailed in my prompt. Miyazawa Rie is a famous Japanese actress.

Interestingly (or not), because Manga characters are generally similar looking I wanted to see if I needed to reference Miyazawa Rie, at all, towards the end of the experiment. With that in mind these are characters I got for different celebrities... which, I hope proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that my thesis about using a celebrity icon and a celebrity artist give Midjourney all the information it needs to create characters that are consistent artistically but also not so close as to be recognizable as who they might be.

MY PRETOTYPING EXPERIMENT FOR A COMMERCIALLY VIABLE GRAPHIC NOVEL

Pretotyping Resources you might find useful:
Pretotyping Quick Reference PDF from AlbertoSavoia.com
Pretotyping Canvas from AlbertoSavoia.com

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"The Right It" by Alberto Savoia Book Review, PLUS a Midjourney Pretotyping Experiment

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A week or two prior to this posting, I did an AI experiment to pretotype how capable ChatGPT was at writing code and wrote about it on LinkedIn. AI's ability to code was unsurprising, everyone's talking about it. But for some (or perhaps many) the concept of a pretotype was - surprising that is.

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Chapter 04: Prototype

In the prototyping phase you will explore and create tangible representations of your ideas - models built quickly and cheaply, intended to be shared with others, used to test and validate (or invalidate!) your proposed solutions.

"If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a prototype is worth a thousand meetings." - Saying at IDEO

Prototyping is getting ideas and explorations out of your head and into the physical world. Building prototypes means exploring, evolving, and communicating ideas, using people, paper, or pixels. At IDEO they describe this part of the design thinking method as "a bias toward action," (rather than endless strategizing, planning, and debate). These models enable and inspire others to engage with, talk and ask questions about, and offer feedback on - your proposed solution.

As a result, creating and sharing even early and very rough prototypes, involves thinking through your idea in practical and preliminary ways. Even a quick napkin sketch is useful if it helps you to collect direct responses from potential end-users, or inspires ideas to further improve and refine a solution.

Prototyping products, services, and experiences will quickly highlight possibilities, opportunities, as well as problems and mistaken assumptions that must be fixed sooner rather than later. As Google's Jake Knapp writes in FastCompany Design, "untested assumptions are like takeout containers in your fridge: If you leave them for very long, things get nasty."

A prototype can be anything that takes a physical form - be it a wall of post-it notes, a role-playing activity, a space, an object, an interface, or even a storyboard. The resolution of your prototype should be commensurate with your progress in your project. In early explorations keep your prototypes rough and rapid to allow yourself to learn quickly and investigate a lot of different possibilities. Prototypes are most successful when people (the design team, the user, and others) can experience and interact with them. What you learn from those interactions can help drive deeper empathy, as well as shape successful solutions.
Make your ideas tangible.
You don't know if an idea will work until you try to make it. Make a version of your idea with the materials you have at hand. Creating mockups and models is the best way to make progress toward your goal, because the act of creating a prototype forces you to make decisions and choices as you translate your idea into something tangible. In other words, it's about building to think.

Regardless of what format you select to express your idea, keep it simple. Prototyping is not about getting it right the first time: the best prototypes change significantly over time.
Make it and break it ... quickly.
Low-fidelity prototyping is about is about detecting and figuring out ways to fix design problems early in your creative process. It is of course better to "fail fast" with a new idea before you get too far down the road, before you overthink, or waste resources on the wrong solution, or before you realize you're solving the wrong problem altogether.

In Tim Brown's experience the more "finished" a prototype is, the less likely you will welcome and want to act on constructive feedback, therefore sharing raw representations of what you are building should start early in the life of a project.

As interaction designer Marc Rettig explains, "Spend enough time crafting something and you are likely to fall in love with it." And as an inventor, you want to fall in love with your user's problems, not get wedded to your solutions.

You'll learn a lot by starting with simple expressions of your ideas, then later developing them to be closer to the final solution. Keep a "parking lot" for questions that come up while you build prototypes. Revisit and answer them as you develop and refine your idea further.

As explained on the IDEO website, "because prototypes are meant only to convey an idea-not to be perfect-you can quickly move through a variety of iterations, building on what you've learned from the people you're designing for."
Plan ahead.
Most concepts cannot be fully realized with just one prototype. Continuous iteration on your concept, requires various resources and capabilities, namely, money, time and people.
Prototyping as problem-solving.
Because prototypes are often somewhat unfinished, typically the initial model will fall well short of capturing either your complete vision or the perfect solution, Roger Martin advises. Instead, prototypes are a tool to accelerate your learning, because they help to surface opportunities and limitations early on. "While prototyping," Kees Dorst writes, "your comprehension of both the problem and the solution deepens at the same time, thus you can speak of the co-evolution of the problem and its solution." Therefore prototyping is a very efficient method of problem solving.

There is rarely one way to best express your ideas to others. When you want to share an idea with your group or community you might:

Tell a story

Share a website mockup

Perform a role-play

Create an advertisement

Create a video or animation

Sing a song

Present a storyboard

Draw your idea

Make a collage

Sketch a wireframe

To sum up, in this chapter we've covered prototyping as a method for experimenting with and refining design solutions. "Rather than discussing, analyzing, or hypothesizing in abstract terms before acting on an idea or initiative," designer Jane Fulton Suri of IDEO advises, "build to think" by creating tangible expressions of your ideas early on. By having a bias toward action and thinking with your hands, Suri explains, you may not get an idea completely developed, but the very act of building it will always push your thinking forward..com

Low-fidelity prototyping encourages you to practice a highly flexible stance while developing solutions, enabling you to make changes on the fly, to learn along the way, and to incorporate those learnings into new ideas as you develop increasingly higher resolution models of your innovations.
Attributions: material from the following open source texts was adapted and integrated into this chapter
"Design Thinking for Educators" IDEO. Circa 2013. CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 https://designthinkingforeducators.com/toolkit/

"Collective Action Toolkit" Frog Design. Circa 2016. CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 https://www.frogdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/CAT_2.0_English.pdf

"Design Thinking for 11th Graders" Bridget McGraw. Circa 2016. CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/engineering-andtechnology/design-and-innovation/design/design-thinking/content-section-0

"The K12 Lab Network wiki" Circa 2015. CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 https://dschool-old.stanford.edu/groups/k12/

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Chapter 04: Prototype In the prototyping phase you will explore and create tangible representations of your ideas - models built quickly and cheaply, intended to be shared with others, used to test and validate (or invalidate!) your proposed solutions. "If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a prototype is worth a thousand meetings."

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This is "the bible" of pretotyping. The first full-length book by Alberto Savoia.

Packed with examples on how to pretotype every type of product, service, or idea, r eading The Right It is like having a personal six hour lesson on pretotyping tools, techniques, and tactics by Alberto Savoia.

Pretotyping @ Stanford

If you only have 30 minutes and want a quick introduction to why and how to pretotype, this video of one of Alberto's seminars at Stanford is a great starting point.

Pretotype It
10th Anniversary Edition

The 10th Anniversary Edition of the booklet that started it all.

Revised, updated, and with much better formatting and editing than the original.

The Right It Video Lessons

Bayes Formula Spreadsheet

For those who are not as fond of math as I am, I've created an Excel spreadsheet that hides all the beautiful (or nasty, depending on where you stand) calculations.

You can download the Excel spreadsheet here and then watch the video on how to use it.

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This is "the bible" of pretotyping. The first full-length book by Alberto Savoia. Packed with examples on how to pretotype every type of product, service, or idea, r eading The Right It is like having a personal six hour lesson on pretotyping tools, techniques, and tactics by Alberto Savoia.

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Evaluating Social Innovation Prototypes - Social Innovation Canada

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"Evaluating Social Innovation Prototypes: A Guide" is a practical resource for those involved with social research and development and who would like to create, test, and learn from prototypes. This how-to guide explores 12 principles to guide the testing process, five key steps for carrying out the process, and includes tables that summarize a variety of prototyping techniques, evaluation methods, and sampling strategies.

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Presentation & draft report due in studio on Friday, March 23, 2018.
Final report and self-assessment (one per group member) due 11:59 pm on Sunday, April 1, 2018. We will be checking for your self-assessments as part of your grade.

Prototype Building Session: In studio on Friday, March 16, 2018.
Prototype Testing: During class on Monday, March 19 and Wednesday, March 21, 2018.

In this group assignment, you will do your first implementation of your term project, as a paper prototype.

There are several class meetings associated with this assignment (days and times shown above):

The building session offers you an opportunity to start building a paper prototype. The course staff will be available to make suggestions, and some materials will be provided.

The testing session will allow you to test a paper prototype on your classmates. For part of the time, you will also serve as a user for somebody else's paper prototype.

You should do at least two rounds of testing, each round involving at least three users. After the first round, you will revise your paper prototype to address the critical usability problems that arose and explore possible design alternatives. Aim to complete one round each class. If you don't manage to complete the second round with your revised prototype in class, you will have to find users outside of class to complete the assignment.

Preparing for Testing

Before testing your prototype, you should:

Build your prototype.
Draw the static background, menus, dialog boxes, and other windows. Decide how to implement the dynamic parts of your interface. Hand-sketching is encouraged. You don't have to prepare every possible screen in advance; it may be much easier to write responses on the fly.

Prepare a briefing for test users.
This should be at most a page of information about the purpose of your application and any background information about the domain that may be needed by your test users. These are your notes for the briefing, so make them short, simple and clear, and not dense, wordy paragraphs. This is not a manual or quick-reference card. It should not describe how to use the interface.

Write your scenario tasks on separate index cards.
Your scenario should have involved at least three tasks. You should write these tasks down to give to your users. Just write the concrete goal(s) of the task (e.g. "buy milk, tomatoes, and bread"). Don't write the specific steps to follow, since that's for your users to figure out. The tasks should be brief, roughly 5 minutes to run.

Choose roles for your team members.
One person must play the computer. The other team members will be observers. It's not necessary to have a facilitator for these pilot tests. It may be useful for you to swap roles after every user on during the testing sessions, so that each of you gets a chance to try each role, but decide how you'll do it in advance.

Practice running your paper prototype.
Every team member should practice playing the computer, learning the steps involved in making the prototype functional, such as rearranging pieces and writing responses. It isn't important to be fast, just competent and confident. A few trials are enough. Make sure your prototype can handle the tasks involved in your scenario.

Running the Tests

When you run your prototype on a user, you should do the following things:

Brief the user.
Use the briefing you wrote up to describe orally the purpose of the application and background information about the domain. Don't waste too much time on this: 1 minute should be enough.

Present one task.
Hand the index card to the user and let them read it. Make sure they understand the task.

Watch the user do the task.
Take notes from your observations, keeping an eye out for critical incidents.

Repeat with the other tasks.
Run as many tasks on the user as you have time for.

Bring extra materials to your testing sessions. Having extra blank Post-it notes, correction tape, and index cards on hand will help you improvise if a user does something unexpected, or help you make small fixes to your prototype between users.

Serving as a User for Your Classmates

During the testing sessions, when you are serving as a user, you should:

Relax and enjoy yourself.
You're not being tested -- the interface is. Part of the point of this experience is to feel what it's like to be users in a user test, so that you can empathize with them.

Be cooperative.
Don't be intentionally stubborn, e.g. looking for Exit everywhere but the File menu. Interact with the interface as you would if you were really using it.

Think aloud.
Help the observers understand what you're thinking by verbalizing your thought process. "Let's see, I want to enter this bottle of milk, so where's the scanner... oh, here it is. I'll scan the bottle like this, oops that didn't work, let me find the bar code..." You get the idea.

Deliverables

Google Doc Project Report. Under the section "GR3 Paper Prototyping" add the following sections:

Images of your prototype.
Digital photos/images of the pieces of your prototype. Show the prototype in interesting states; don't just show a blank window. Although you will iterate your paper prototype during this assignment, the photos only need to show one iteration. Ensure the quality of these photos is high enough so that you can actually see the features of your paper prototype! Smartphone images are often not high enough quality/blurry/too small. You can produce high quality images by scanning your prototype using the scanners in the Barker or Hayden library.

Briefing.
The briefing you gave to users.

Scenario Tasks.
The tasks you gave to users, as you wrote them on the cards.

Observations.
Usability problems you discovered from the testing. Describe critical incidents encountered by the users, but don't record users' names. Record these as a series of high-level takeaways, focusing on the usability problems you saw, rather than what each participant did. For instance, you might describe how you had some learnability issues with your prototype, as evidenced by users B and C clicking all of the menus to try to find option X.

Prototype iteration.
You did multiple rounds of paper prototyping. Please state the number of iterations you did, the outcome of each iteration, and the number of users tested in each iteration. Describe how your prototype changed between those two rounds.

Studio Reflection. Describe the feedback you got in your studio sessions, and how you will incorporate it into your project.

Studio presentation. You must prepare a Google Slides slideshow to present this work in studio. Use this template presentation as a guide. Send the link to your mentor by 12pm (noon) on Friday. Also bring your physical prototype(s) to studio to show the class. Take notes during the discussion of your presentation and put the important ones in your report.

Self-assessment form. Complete your individual self-assessment forms by the deadline.

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Presentation & draft report due in studio on Friday, March 23, 2018. Final report and self-assessment (one per group member) due 11:59 pm on Sunday, April 1, 2018. We will be checking for your self-assessments as part of your grade. Prototype Building Session: In studio on Friday, March 16, 2018.

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One person often gets stuck with thankless tasks-and the problem exists not only in schools but in the workplace. Here's something I wrote about the topic for Character Lab as a Tip of the Week:

"How did I get stuck doing this again?" my daughter moaned.

For a group project at school, she once again found herself in the role of "compiler." You know, the person who takes everyone's content and threads it together into a compelling narrative.

Compiling is a thankless task, one that is done behind the scenes and takes a tremendous amount of time yet is rarely rewarded. Sometimes a teacher knows who contributed each section of content but almost never asks who handled this administrative role.

This problem goes beyond school. The workplace equivalent is the nonpromotable task-resolving conflicts, sitting on organizational governance committees, taking meeting notes for team projects.

Research shows that there is significant inequity in who performs these types of tasks, and often, the same people keep doing them over and over again. It probably won't surprise you to learn that women, more often than men, fall into this category. The downside goes beyond lack of recognition for the work. When the same people shoulder thankless tasks, it can lead to bruised feelings and create hesitancy about collaborating with others.

But life is essentially a group project, so how do you better manage these tasks? To start, you can make sure everyone recognizes the problem, then enlist your teammates to divide and conquer in an equitable way.

Don't feel resigned to taking on thankless tasks by yourself.

Do help young people learn simple techniques to split thankless tasks up more fairly. If it's a repeated responsibility, taking turns is a good option. If it is a one-time chore, suggest ways to divvy it up. For example, compiling a group report can be divided into the following tasks: putting the sections together, making the report visually appealing, polishing the graphics, putting together references and footnotes, and threading the story together. As the saying goes, many hands make light work.

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What Students Wish Teachers Understood About Group Projects (Opinion)

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One person often gets stuck with thankless tasks-and the problem exists not only in schools but in the workplace. Here's something I wrote about the topic for Character Lab as a Tip of the Week: "How did I get stuck doing this again?" my daughter moaned.

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Presentation & draft report due in studio on Friday, March 23, 2018.
Final report and self-assessment (one per group member) due 11:59 pm on Sunday, April 1, 2018. We will be checking for your self-assessments as part of your grade.

Prototype Building Session: In studio on Friday, March 16, 2018.
Prototype Testing: During class on Monday, March 19 and Wednesday, March 21, 2018.

In this group assignment, you will do your first implementation of your term project, as a paper prototype.

There are several class meetings associated with this assignment (days and times shown above):

The building session offers you an opportunity to start building a paper prototype. The course staff will be available to make suggestions, and some materials will be provided.

The testing session will allow you to test a paper prototype on your classmates. For part of the time, you will also serve as a user for somebody else's paper prototype.

You should do at least two rounds of testing, each round involving at least three users. After the first round, you will revise your paper prototype to address the critical usability problems that arose and explore possible design alternatives. Aim to complete one round each class. If you don't manage to complete the second round with your revised prototype in class, you will have to find users outside of class to complete the assignment.

Preparing for Testing

Before testing your prototype, you should:

Build your prototype.
Draw the static background, menus, dialog boxes, and other windows. Decide how to implement the dynamic parts of your interface. Hand-sketching is encouraged. You don't have to prepare every possible screen in advance; it may be much easier to write responses on the fly.

Prepare a briefing for test users.
This should be at most a page of information about the purpose of your application and any background information about the domain that may be needed by your test users. These are your notes for the briefing, so make them short, simple and clear, and not dense, wordy paragraphs. This is not a manual or quick-reference card. It should not describe how to use the interface.

Write your scenario tasks on separate index cards.
Your scenario should have involved at least three tasks. You should write these tasks down to give to your users. Just write the concrete goal(s) of the task (e.g. "buy milk, tomatoes, and bread"). Don't write the specific steps to follow, since that's for your users to figure out. The tasks should be brief, roughly 5 minutes to run.

Choose roles for your team members.
One person must play the computer. The other team members will be observers. It's not necessary to have a facilitator for these pilot tests. It may be useful for you to swap roles after every user on during the testing sessions, so that each of you gets a chance to try each role, but decide how you'll do it in advance.

Practice running your paper prototype.
Every team member should practice playing the computer, learning the steps involved in making the prototype functional, such as rearranging pieces and writing responses. It isn't important to be fast, just competent and confident. A few trials are enough. Make sure your prototype can handle the tasks involved in your scenario.

Running the Tests

When you run your prototype on a user, you should do the following things:

Brief the user.
Use the briefing you wrote up to describe orally the purpose of the application and background information about the domain. Don't waste too much time on this: 1 minute should be enough.

Present one task.
Hand the index card to the user and let them read it. Make sure they understand the task.

Watch the user do the task.
Take notes from your observations, keeping an eye out for critical incidents.

Repeat with the other tasks.
Run as many tasks on the user as you have time for.

Bring extra materials to your testing sessions. Having extra blank Post-it notes, correction tape, and index cards on hand will help you improvise if a user does something unexpected, or help you make small fixes to your prototype between users.

Serving as a User for Your Classmates

During the testing sessions, when you are serving as a user, you should:

Relax and enjoy yourself.
You're not being tested -- the interface is. Part of the point of this experience is to feel what it's like to be users in a user test, so that you can empathize with them.

Be cooperative.
Don't be intentionally stubborn, e.g. looking for Exit everywhere but the File menu. Interact with the interface as you would if you were really using it.

Think aloud.
Help the observers understand what you're thinking by verbalizing your thought process. "Let's see, I want to enter this bottle of milk, so where's the scanner... oh, here it is. I'll scan the bottle like this, oops that didn't work, let me find the bar code..." You get the idea.

Deliverables

Google Doc Project Report. Under the section "GR3 Paper Prototyping" add the following sections:

Images of your prototype.
Digital photos/images of the pieces of your prototype. Show the prototype in interesting states; don't just show a blank window. Although you will iterate your paper prototype during this assignment, the photos only need to show one iteration. Ensure the quality of these photos is high enough so that you can actually see the features of your paper prototype! Smartphone images are often not high enough quality/blurry/too small. You can produce high quality images by scanning your prototype using the scanners in the Barker or Hayden library.

Briefing.
The briefing you gave to users.

Scenario Tasks.
The tasks you gave to users, as you wrote them on the cards.

Observations.
Usability problems you discovered from the testing. Describe critical incidents encountered by the users, but don't record users' names. Record these as a series of high-level takeaways, focusing on the usability problems you saw, rather than what each participant did. For instance, you might describe how you had some learnability issues with your prototype, as evidenced by users B and C clicking all of the menus to try to find option X.

Prototype iteration.
You did multiple rounds of paper prototyping. Please state the number of iterations you did, the outcome of each iteration, and the number of users tested in each iteration. Describe how your prototype changed between those two rounds.

Studio Reflection. Describe the feedback you got in your studio sessions, and how you will incorporate it into your project.

Studio presentation. You must prepare a Google Slides slideshow to present this work in studio. Use this template presentation as a guide. Send the link to your mentor by 12pm (noon) on Friday. Also bring your physical prototype(s) to studio to show the class. Take notes during the discussion of your presentation and put the important ones in your report.

Self-assessment form. Complete your individual self-assessment forms by the deadline.

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Presentation & draft report due in studio on Friday, March 23, 2018. Final report and self-assessment (one per group member) due 11:59 pm on Sunday, April 1, 2018. We will be checking for your self-assessments as part of your grade. Prototype Building Session: In studio on Friday, March 16, 2018.

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Rapid Prototyping: Digital | Google for Startups

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Rapid prototyping Google Glass - Tom Chi

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6 of Today’s Most Popular Prototyping Tools

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In this article, we break down six popular prototyping tools, looking at their strengths, weaknesses, and costs.

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Notes from the Field | User Research, User Feedback, UX & Design - Original, thoughtful content on User Research & UX Design brought to you by Qualaroo, an automated user research platform.

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Testing prototypes is an inherent part of finalizing designs. Nobody wants to wonder why users are not utilizing an app the way it should be utilized or why they can't seem to complete a purchase on your website. And nobody wants to rework something that's already been shipped.

Conducting tests as early as the prototyping stage can help you avoid these unfortunate scenarios. User research with Qualaroo can help you validate your current design and uncover new areas of focus for the next iteration. Use Qualaroo to understand how people use your interface early on in the design process and evolve your prototype into a working product faster.

If you're reading this, you probably already understand the value of testing prototypes, but for those who are just starting their adventure with UX, let's review the benefits.

One of the main reasons to create prototypes, for digital products but also across all industries, is to test and validate your designs. With prototypes, designers and their companies want to see if their design makes sense at all - whether or not it works if people can use it, and whether or not they even care to use it.

Prototypes rarely exist as a single iteration. They're typically a series of versions that allow for comparison and ultimately choosing the best solution. Hence, there are prototypes of cars presented to the public, sample collections in the fashion industry, floor plans put together by interior designers used to visualize if all the elements will fit in the space, architectural prototypes used to test materials or airflows in ventilation, and industrial designers produce prototypes to achieve the most ergonomic forms for their products.

Prototypes are not only created for designers to test but for actual users to test as well. It's important to get input from those who are not immersed in the design process and don't know how the designed object is supposed to work. This outsider's perspective is often the most useful as it's unclouded by a concept of how the design should behave. You can achieve these types of insights even when testing with participants that do not have domain expertise and are not necessarily your target user. Testing early on in the design process include saving both time and money in the process of creating and releasing a product.

And last but not least, prototypes are a means of communicating with stakeholders and the teams that will execute on the final product. No matter how hard we try, describing a design with words will never be as effective as sharing a prototype.

Prototype Testing Step-by-Step

There are a number of prototyping methods that can produce different results. For the purposes of this article, we'll focus on paper and digital prototypes for software and websites.

When it comes to testing prototypes there are a few basic rules. The way you go about testing the prototype depends on a couple of things:

The type of prototype you have (sketch, storyboard, physical prototypes, paper interface, digital prototype, etc.) will impact how users will interact with it;

Your testing goals are important and will help you develop the testing scenarios and questions to ask;

Time constraints, or in other words, by when you need to have results will also inform the best method of prototyping for you.

Step 1: Create the prototype.

Your prototype doesn't need to be perfect or even particularly detailed. You can collect user insights on anything, even rough sketches. Of course, the more detailed and interactive your prototype is, the more you'll have to test. Sketches are great for verifying whether or not a user can discern the purpose of your application or website and what the user can do with it. Interactive, hi-fi prototypes that more closely resemble the final product will allow for more testing and may also be easier for users to understand. However, remember you are testing prototypes, in part, to avoid putting too much work in developing a solution that will ultimately not be usable. You don't want to put too much time and effort in what's "only" the prototype of that solution. It's more useful to have 2-3 rough prototypes to test than have 1 pixel-perfect prototype. Not only you can test a couple of designs but usually people are more likely to be open with their critical remarks if they see a couple of versions, rather than criticizing one design as it may seem like the 'only' solution.

If the prototype is digital and interactive it will also require less face-time with users. This is because paper prototypes typically require short interviews with every participant in order to collect useful insights. With digital prototypes, you can also automate the process of collecting insights using tools like Qualaroo that enable you to ask users questions during testing or after.

It's also advisable to put real data into your prototype. You don't need to worry about using finalized pictures and copy, but it is a good idea to use this as an opportunity to test your microcopy. If there is any user data visible in the interface prototype you're testing make sure it sounds real. If you want to indicate the user is logged in and the name on the user profile would be visible in that case instead of coming up with Obi-Wan Kenobi, just put John Smith. Obi-Wan Kenobi may be funny but will probably just distract your test participant.

Step 2: Decide what you want to test.

This step is all about what you want to validate or verify.

There are a number of things you can test on a prototype, but prototype testing isn't perfect for everything.

Things you can and should test on the prototype:

Concept validation - this is not about testing whether you should be building the solution you're working on at all, but rather verifying if people can quickly figure out what they are looking at and what it does. These tests are most commonly used for home page prototypes but you can also test product pages in e-com or dashboards in online tools.

Navigation - navigation can be easily tested in prototypes on the condition that you are using finalized labels and category names. It can help you discover things like whether or not your search field and menu are where people expect to find them and if their naming makes sense. Ultimately you want to test whether or not people find what they think they're going to find based on the categories you present.

Flow of specific features/ functionalities - prototypes are great for testing if you get the steps for the user accomplishing the task in your design right, as well as their order. Does your product flow smoothly or is it making your user feel confused?

Microcopy - as mentioned above, try to put real labels, menu categories, button names and short descriptions on your prototype. Firstly, this will verify whether or not people understand what they're seeing at first glance (concept validation), but it will also show you if there is anything confusing in the microcopy that should be changed.

Things you shouldn't test on prototypes:

Graphic design - prototypes are just schematic representations of your final product, they are not colorful and they don't have all the visual elements, therefore testing "look & feel" on prototypes is not possible.

Content - prototypes are not filled with the final content, and are not the best way to check if your content will resonate with your target audience. To check this, send your content to a couple of people from your target group or display questions in your working product or blog.

Volume testing - the idea behind testing the prototypes is to collect quality feedback on the functional design so that you can iterate and eliminate the largest issues that would hinder your user's ability to complete their tasks in your product. Prototypes are not intended to help you collect volumes of data. Technically it's possible, but insights from a couple of participants will deliver enough insights to make the next version better. Testing at volume is also difficult with prototypes because you would need to recruit large amounts of users to send the prototype link to and this can be a major obstacle. Prototype testing is about gathering actionable feedback fast, not collecting as much feedback as you can.

Related Read - Here's a comprehensive list of the Best Customer feedback tools for 2020 if you wish to gather customer feedback easily.

Form research questions. Research questions are not questions that you ask users during or after the test. These are questions you are trying to find answers to by asking users to carry out different scenarios with your prototype. Research questions indicate what exactly you are trying to find out about your prototype or product. They should be composed carefully as they will set the direction of your test and determine what the scenarios and tasks for the test will look like. They should not be too general. Keep in mind that based on the outcome of the test you will want to make some design decisions. Research questions can also be formed as goals.

Example of a bad research question/goal:

Example of a better research question/goal:

Example of good research questions/ goals:

I want to check if users will be able to find the information they're looking for in my prototype.

I want to check if users will be able to find the product they are looking for in the prototype.

I want to check which version of the prototype seems easier for users when it comes to finding a specific product on it.

Depending on how much time you have for testing and what the scope is, you should have 1-5 research questions developed. This doesn't mean you cannot observe other aspects of your design being tested. In fact, every time you conduct user research, there almost always will be plenty of other learnings apart from what you were directly testing. You should still always have 1-5 core aspects you want to test/analyze.

Step 3: Prepare your test scenarios or tasks.

Usability testing is never about just showing your prototype or website to the user and observing what they do with it. It's about giving users a specific task to perform that's linked to the problem your product or website is aiming to solve. Tasks (or scenarios) have a form of small narratives, they're typically brief but still give your test participants some context.

This is the moment when you use your research questions to compose your tasks. Your research questions will tell you what the tasks should be about. Remember the tasks should focus on the goals of your users not the functionalities and features of your product.

The best example illustrating the difference is a usability study conducted by Jared Spool and his team for Ikea, years ago. The test explored how people found products on Ikea's website. The initial task was: "Find a bookcase", later it was changed to: "You have 200+ books in your fiction collection, currently in boxes strewn around your living room. Find a way to organize them."

The way the task is formulated influences the results. In this case, users following the first task usually typed "bookcase" in the search field. Users in the second scenario were usually browsing through product categories and searching for any products that would be suitable for storing books, not necessarily products named "bookcase". In the end, the problem a user tries to solve here is finding furniture to put their books on, whether or not that's a bookcase.

This is particularly important when designing products or websites that use very specific language. Try to avoid words that would be leading and make your users accomplish the task faster or in a different way than they would normally. Try to not give clues in general.

The best approach is to make the task resemble real life. If you are asking your user to book a flight via your app/ prototype don't say just "Book a flight from Seattle to Amsterdam". A better scenario would be: "You want to visit your friend in Amsterdam in September. You booked two weeks off at work. You realize it is an expensive flight but you would like to spend as little as possible. In addition to this, due to your recent back problems you are considering upgrading your flight class."

Another thing to keep in mind is that task narratives are not the place to explain your product or website or where you sell it. The whole idea of testing is to verify whether or not people will be able to use it on their own, without anyone explaining anything to them prior and without anyone persuading them they should be using it. What's more, especially if you are doing a face-to-face test, users may be reluctant to be honest with any criticism of the prototype if they see you are so attached to it - they will not want to hurt your feelings.

Finally, remember to not develop tasks that are impossible to be completed. If your prototype doesn't include the feature, flow or elements you want to test, you cannot test it.

Step 4: Question time!

Once you have tasks for your participants, the only thing you're missing is questions you should be asking during or after the test.

For a comprehensive guide on how to ask questions click here.

Below you will find a list of questions we suggest using.

To validate if the design is communicating well what the product or website is for at first glance.

What do you think this tool/ website is for?

What do you think you can do on this website/ in this app?

When would you use it?

Who do you think this is this for?

Is there anything it resembles? If yes, what?

What doesn't make sense here?

Questions to be asked after each task the participant performed.
Even though your participants are testing the prototype, call it what it's supposed to be: website, system, tool, product, application. The more real it feels, the better.

Task-specific questions.

Was there anything that surprised you? If yes, what?

Was there anything you expected to find that was not there?

What was difficult or weird about this task?

What was easy about this task?

Did you find everything you were looking for?

What didn't look the way you expected?

What was missing, if anything?

What was unnecessary, if anything?

Was anything out of place?

If you had a magic wand, what would you change?

How would you rate the difficulty level of this task?

Did it take you more or less time than you expected to complete this task? Would you normally spend this amount of time on doing this?

These questions depend solely on what the task was. Some examples would be:
At the end of a test.

How did you recognize that the product was on sale?

What information about shipping was missing?

What were the accepted payments methods?

How did you know the plan you picked was the right one for you?

Do you think booking a flight on this website was easier or more difficult than on other websites you have used in the past?

Did sending money via this app feel safe?

Do you think data gathered by this app is reliable?

Try to list the features our tool has. - This question allows you to see what stood out the most to the user. Users never use all the functionalities of a product or website. Especially with our current tendency to multiply them in our tools, instead of minimizing their number. This question also may indicate what features users ignored or may have simply not noticed in the design.

Do you feel this application/tool/website is easy to use?

What would you change in this application/website?

How would you improve this tool/website/service?

There is also a wonderful design thinking method called "I Like, I Wish, What If". In this approach, you ask your research participants to finish 3 sentences starting with: "I Like...", "I Wish..." and "What If...". This encourages users to share both their positive feedback and criticism simply because the critical feedback is expressed in a non-negative way. On top of that "What if..." is a great way to collect ideas from the users that your design team didn't come up with. These questions can be asked after each task or at the end of the test.

We suggest not using more than 4-5 questions in a sequence (after each task) since this can disturb the flow of the test and can cause fatigue. If the test is face-to-face you will probably be asking additional questions that will pop up during observation to probe the difficulties participants encountered. If this is a remote test with a tool like Qualaroo, more than 4-5 questions will result in a lower response rate, and since you would be only testing your prototypes on a couple of users, the response rate is important.

Step 5: Time to recruit research participants.

You can find tips for recruiting user research participants with Qualaroo here.

Step 6: Start testing!

Here are some final things to keep in mind that will help your test to be efficient and useful.

If you are collecting any personal information about your test participant you should get their consent first. This also applies when you are recording them while they test your prototype. You should be particularly careful when conducting the study in European Union, where GDPR would apply. However, please mind that outside the EU more and more countries (and some states in the USA) are introducing similar regulations. Make sure you not only get the consent to collect information on participants and/or record them but also inform them these will only serve to prepare conclusions and a summary of the study and that they will only be used internally and not published anywhere.

Make it very clear that the usability test (or UX/ user/ prototype test/ study/ research) is not about testing the user (them) but testing the functional design. This means participants can only help us verify whether the prototype is good or not. Be sure to tell your participants they can't be wrong.

Tell your participants you did not build the prototype. If they think you are the one who developed the prototype they will refrain from critical remarks to not hurt your feelings. To encourage honest feedback, be open and engaged. If this is face-to-face study, don't defend the prototype and design solutions in it. Be neutral and try to avoid emotionally-loaded words whenever you are describing the prototype or its elements.

Step 7: What to do after testing.

The whole point of making a test like that is to find out what to change in your interface, how to make it better and more usable for people. The beauty of UX research is that it always works. You will end up with a list of things to fix. Quite likely, you will have more items on your list than you can focus on given limited time and deadlines we all have. However, remember you don't have to fix everything. Try to figure out which usability problems are critical for the user. If you cannot make a decision, invite a person or a few people to a good old debriefing session. Share the results you have with them and try to pick their brain. You don't have to invite people from outside of your company, and people you invite do not have to be UX experts.

Be realistic about how much you can fix before the next round of testing or before handing in your designs to the dev team.

Pro tips

Moderated or not? Remote or not?

Moderated test means there is a person facilitating the test with participants. This can be done face-to-face when both people sit in the same room during the test, or remotely, when both participant and moderator are connected via conferencing software, phone, chat or a combination of these channels. Apart from that, all the other elements are the same. Users would be testing prototypes or a live website or products and they would be trying to complete tasks prepared in advance by the researcher.

In an unmoderated test, participants get instructions with a list of tasks, but there is no-one assisting them so they cannot ask questions during the test. Unmoderated research is somewhat more popular for remote testing.

You may be wondering if testing your prototype should be moderated or not. Both approaches have pros and cons. If the session is moderated, you have more control over what is happening and you may decide during the session to skip some tasks or help your participant when they get stuck for too long. Keep in mind that helping participants is not advised because if some step in the flow is too difficult we want to see what they would do in such a situation. You should always care about the participants' wellbeing so if you notice they are struggling and not really trying to solve the problem anymore and just getting stressed, just ask them to move on to the next task).

Non-moderated sessions can be difficult to intervene in and typically don't allow you to ask follow-up or probing questions. However, even with these sessions, it's possible to introduce changes before all the participants complete the test if you are not sending link to all participants at once. Simply change the tasks or questions before sending the link to the next participant.

Unmoderated tests are quite effective and still allow you to learn about a lot of usability issues while saving time. These solutions are more scalable and also helpful with remote tests with users in different time zones.

Test your test!

You may want to pilot test your test, especially if this is a new domain for you. A trial test will help you quickly pick up anything you forgot about and will help with understanding if the participants will easily pick up the tasks you prepared for them. This doesn't require too much preparation or recruiting anyone specific. Just ask anyone from your company to sit in front of the screen for a moment and read the tasks. If something is not clear you will know immediately because they will be confused and will start asking questions right at the beginning. This is very useful especially when you are trying hard to choose the right words to describe the tasks and avoid leading or emotionally loaded words because sometimes you end up with a version that is too tricky to be understood by the average person.

Remember, user research is not supposed to be scientific. What you are trying to get is qualitative data, insights and an understanding of how people use your interface and what issues they are encountering with it. Not every test needs to be the same, you don't need to stick to a scenario just for the sake of it. A common-sense approach is best.

We have the world's most versatile user research & feedback survey tool starting at $0

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Testing prototypes is an inherent part of finalizing designs. Nobody wants to wonder why users are not utilizing an app the way it should be utilized or why they can't seem to complete a purchase on your website. And nobody wants to rework something that's already been shipped.

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Tip #2: How do you move from an idea to a prototype?

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0:00 / 2:15•Watch full video

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Circles of Feedback | Low-Fidelity Prototypes & User Research | Rapid Prototyping | Udacity

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Some ideas for putting prototyping into action

Prototyping is a great way to test ideas on your current or potential international students, and other stakeholders.

For example, you may have an idea for a new marketing tool that you want to test, such as an app. With prototyping, you can run through scenarios with students to see how a new tool might be used in practice.

Prototyping even works for more large-scale, 'real world' scenarios. For example, say you have some novel ideas for changing how you set up a connection point/desk at education fairs that you're interested in testing. You could quickly set up a mock prototype of how you want your event space to look in a spare room and get students to come in and test it. You can then observe how people walk around the space, how the signage works (or doesn't work), or other key aspects of your idea.

Remember, your prototypes don't need to be flash - you're looking for cheap, rough and ready ways to test your ideas quickly.

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Prototyping is a great way to test ideas on your current or potential international students, and other stakeholders. For example, you may have an idea for a new marketing tool that you want to test, such as an app. With prototyping, you can run through scenarios with students to see how a new tool might be used in practice.

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Design Kit is IDEO.org's platform to learn human-centered design, a creative approach to solving the world's most difficult problems.

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When discussing the concept of pretotyping with someone new, we often get asked the question: "Wait . . don't you mean 'prototyping'?"

We get that it can be confusing, and so we'd like to clear it up.

To start, let us give you some definitions:

Prototype: A first or preliminary version of a device, product or vehicle from which other forms are developed.
"...the first, original, or typical form of something; an archetype"
Pretotype: A rapid experiment that aims to test ideas quickly, simply, and at low cost, gathering data in order to validate ideas before building a prototype.
Often run in a series, building on the learnings from each previous pretotype experiment to test each element of the proposed product.
A prototype asks the question: CAN we build it? The answer is yes, it's 2021. We can build anything!

By comparison, a pretotype asks: SHOULD we build it? This question requires some deeper investigation, so let's dive in.

The Prototype

As you can see from the definition above (taken from the Oxford English dictionary), a prototype is the first version of a product from which copies and following editions are made. The main objective of prototyping is to answer questions that arise around the building of a product. These include questions like:

Whilst prototypes are an important and very necessary step in the product development process, they're often created without any validated data to show whether or not anyone will even want the product once it has been built. They're also often created based on Other People's Data (OPD), which is something we believe should be avoided at all cost.

This is because what works for others may not work for you. You should only trust your own data, or YODA as we like to call it (yes, we're obsessed with Star Wars, but who isn't?) because it relates directly to your product and was collected by you. This also gives you visibility across every step of the process, providing specific insight about your customers based on exactly what you are trying to test.

To fill the gap created by jumping straight to a prototype and to answer the question of whether anyone will actually use it, pretotyping should be used before the prototype is created. While it might seem counterintuitive to pause the process and take valuable time to run rapid experiments at the start, we promise it'll save you time, money and resources in the long run.

The Pretotype

Unlike a prototype, a pretotype isn't a thing so much as it is a mini-experiment, designed with the aim of testing an idea quickly, simply and at a very low cost. Pretotyping asks you to break your idea down to its smallest possible testable form and run an experiment to see if anyone will use the product. You can then use these learnings to run additional pretotypes until you have enough of Your Own ( validated) at to prove it is worth it to build the thing.

Where prototyping focuses on questions relating to the construction of a product, pretotyping focuses on its appeal and usage, asking questions like:

Will people be interested in it?

Will they use it the way we expect?

Will it solve their problem?

Will they use it more than once?

One of the most famous examples of pretotyping is that of the Palm Pilot. When he had the idea for this product, the founder of Palm Computing, Jeff Hawkins, didn't rush to build the device. He ran pretotypes to make sure that a) the product would work functionally and b) that people would actually want to buy and use them. He did this by mocking up a Palm Pilot using pieces of wood and paper, carrying it around for a few weeks and "using" it to see if it was valuable and to test other people's interest in it.

Whilst he didn't know it at the time (because Alberto Savoia hadn't invented the name "Pretotyping" yet), Hawkins was demonstrating a perfect example of a pretotype - an experiment using the smallest possible investment of time and money to see if the product would actually work.

Pretotype + Prototype = 🏆

As we've mentioned above, pretotyping and prototyping are actually best placed when used together, one after the other. When you have an idea, pretotyping can be used to test each element of the proposed product, creating your own collectable data and letting you know if it's even worth building in the first place. The process also allows you to test many different elements of the potential product; this means you will emerge with the best possible plan as well as considerable data that could be useful when it comes to creating the prototype.

Once the pretotypes have all been run, the data collected and analysed and the evidence-based decision made, then it's time to build the prototype, which will be all the better for the time taken to pretotype it in the first place.

Want to learn more about Pretotyping? Visit our website to read about how we've helped companies like PEXA and AGL successfully implement pretotyping within their innovation processes, or sign up for a free preview of our online 'Learn Pretotyping' course.

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Pretotyping vs. Prototyping - Exponentially

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When discussing the concept of pretotyping with someone new, we often get asked the question: "Wait . . don't you mean 'prototyping'?" We get that it can be confusing, and so we'd like to clear it up. To start, let us give you some definitions: Prototype: A first or preliminary version of a device, product or vehicle from which other forms are developed.

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IDEO (pronounced "eye-dee-oh") is an international design, engineering, and innovation firm that has developed thousands of products and services for clients across a wide range of industries. Its process and culture have attracted the attention of academics, businesses, and journalists around the world, and are the subject of a bestselling book, The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley. One of the keys to IDEO's success is its use of prototyping as a tool for rapid innovation.
Right
A leading manufacturer of personal computers came to IDEO to design a new laptop. One of the many areas they wanted us to improve was the design of the door that covers and protects the connectors on the back of the product. Why were they so interested in this door? It turns out that one of the most common failures in a laptop is the connector door. This little feature is constantly used and abused, and inevitably breaks or falls off, causing great annoyance to the user. Our customer wanted an innovative solution that was reliable and easy to use.

The team brainstormed hundreds of alternate solutions, and quickly narrowed down the field to several that seemed promising. How to select the best concept? Analysis was not enough; we needed to know how the doors functioned when used, and this clearly called for prototyping. At this point in the program, the overall design of the laptop had not yet been developed. Regardless, the team pressed ahead and built a series of prototypes that focused exclusively on the connector door.
By limiting the time, energy, blood, sweat, and tears you put into a prototype, you can reduce your bias towards a concept.
Models of the door concepts were machined from plastic that would simulate the actual performance and feel of a real production solution. These models were then attached to blocks of wood that roughly approximated the size and weight of the final laptop design. Great attention to detail was placed on the areas around the door and hinge, while no effort was made to simulate any other aspect of the laptop.

Some of the concepts were complex. For example, one concept used a clever geared hinge to open a set of double doors, revealing the hidden connectors in an appealing way. Others were simple; one even "borrowed" from the common metal tape measure to create a sliding door. In fact, the team literally used a tape measure in the prototype-a quick method of testing the concept. These prototypes were taken to potential users and tested. They were pulled, pushed, squeezed, dropped, and cycled until the flaws in the concepts were revealed and a clear winner could be selected.

This example illustrates an important concept in prototyping. A prototype should be designed to answer a specific question. The key is to ask the right question (the right question is the one you really need answered), and target your prototypes to answer it.

We find that if we try to answer too many questions with a single prototype, the prototypes become more expensive, take longer to create, and often provide less value than a series of quicker, cheaper prototypes targeted at individual questions. Prototyping in this manner keeps the cost of failure low.

Rapid
Prototyping does not have to be painful. Prototypes don't have to break your project budget and devour all of your project resources. A prototype can (and should) be built in a few minutes.

IDEO developed a small digital camera that plugs into the expansion port of a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). While this product provided serious engineering challenges, one of the toughest challenges was developing the software interface that the user encounters when operating the product. A poorly designed interface can ruin a user's experience with a technically perfect product.

Before any software code was written, IDEO's interaction designers prototyped the user interface using the quickest method they could think of: Post-It® notes. They created a series of handwritten Post-Its that represented the on-screen menus and windows the user might encounter while using the product. The team could quickly simulate and test different interface screens and menu logic by simply peeling away successive layers of Post-Its as a user navigated through the "software." If something did not make sense, they could toss the Post-It and quickly create another.

Again, this prototype was taken to users and tested, refined, and iterated. By the end of the prototyping process, the team had a solid structure they could use to develop the actual software. All without ever turning on a computer.

The main value of this sort of rapid prototyping is the ability to quickly evaluate your concept, and refine it through a series of iterative prototypes. Instead of spending your time and resources speculating solutions and analyzing the problem, spend your time solving it. Fail early in order to succeed sooner.

One of my favorite tools for rapid prototyping is Lego®. These ubiquitous children's toys are a great way to prototype fairly complex mechanisms. During the development of a medical instrument, an IDEO team used Legos to prototype several concepts for a mechanism to convert continuous rotary motion into reciprocating linear motion. These prototypes clearly could not be used for surgery, but they are great for allowing an engineer to visualize a concept and work through some of the complex details rapidly.

There are many great materials and tools available for rapid prototyping. Often, these are things you can find laying around: wood, plastic, tape, hot glue, coat hangers, boxes, plastic tubes, and toys. For more complex problems, tools like fused deposition modeling (FDM) and stereo lithography (SLA) are often useful. Feel free to mix high-tech and low-tech components and techniques. Use your prototype to get feedback, and then move on.

Rough
A prototype does not have to be pretty.

Sleep apnea is a significant problem facing millions of people. While a sufferer of this condition sleeps, the muscles at the base of the throat relax and obstruct the airway. This results in a drastic slowdown or even stoppage of breathing that can cause hypoxia or even death. One solution to this problem is to provide positive pressure to the person's airway to keep it open. The user wears a mask over the nose connected by a tube to a pump to provide the needed pressure.

IDEO worked closely with a medical device manufacturer to develop a product designed to help people with sleep apnea. Several products existed on the market, but all shared a common flaw: They were uncomfortable to wear while sleeping, and many sufferers refused to use them. IDEO set out to develop a product that exceeded the performance of existing products on the market, and that would let a user sleep comfortably.

One concept that quickly emerged was to mount the air tube over the user's head. This idea seemed attractive since it addressed a number of complaints from users. It could locate the tube in a predictable place, keep it from moving around as the user shifted during sleep, and it relieved the weight of the tube, preventing it from pulling at the mask.
Fail early in order to succeed sooner.
A series of head-mounted concepts were generated and quickly prototyped at the engineers' desks using commonly found objects and a little creativity. Engineers put prototypes together using the lining of a bicycle helmet, stereo headphones, and pieces of hand-cut plastic in order to try out different ideas. They took them home and slept with them on, waking up to modify them as they encountered problems.

These prototypes weren't attractive; however, they did the job and allowed the team to focus in on a winning solution. The final product incorporated a number of concepts from the various prototypes, including a unique cantilever design allowing it to accommodate various head sizes and shapes. The final product was beautiful, but it was a beauty that came from humble beginnings.

One of the benefits of creating rough prototypes is that you reduce your emotional attachment to a concept. By limiting the time, energy, blood, sweat, and tears you put into a prototype, you reduce your bias towards the concept, and are more likely to make objective conclusions and decisions about its value.
Lessons

Prototyping is a technique that embraces failure as a means to ultimate success.

The Right-Rapid-Rough approach fosters innovation by forcing you to use all of your senses to attack a problem.

Question
How do you learn from small failures on a project?

About the Author

Craig Lawrence. After earning a Ph.D. at Stanford University, Lawrence joined IDEO in 1999 as a mechanical engineer and project manager in the Smart Products studio. Focusing his efforts on developing electromechanical products, Lawrence has been a technical contributor and manager on such projects as a portable fuel cell battery for consumer electronics and a handheld medical instrument to measure human metabolism.Lawrence is a frequent instructor at IDEO workshops, helping clients understand how to work with innovation tools. In addition, he is a regular instructor at APPL's Advanced Project Management course, and he has participated in other NASA forums for the knowledge sharing community.

About the Author

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IDEO (pronounced "eye-dee-oh") is an international design, engineering, and innovation firm that has developed thousands of products and services for clients across a wide range of industries. Its process and culture have attracted the attention of academics, businesses, and journalists around the world, and are the subject of a bestselling book, The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley.

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The word prototype may conjure images of sleekly crafted model cars at an auto show or the new hot gadget being demoed at CES three months prior to launch. Companies, on the other hand, often see prototypes as resource-intensive milestones that are avoided when possible. These prototypes are often very refined preproduction or engineering models that are usually used to communicate the design to customers or to test the system (think crash testing cars). We often associate prototypes with nearly completed or just-before launch versions of products. However, designers create prototypes at all phases of the design process at various resolutions. What we see in the media is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the power of prototyping.

Communicating at every stage

Trade shows are filled with prototypes and demonstrations designed to get potential customers interested and excited. This is one way of communicating through prototypes, but different prototypes can be used at different stages of the design process. Early in the design process, very rough prototype can be better at communicating ideas to teammates and users than words or pictures.

In a famous anecdote from Ideo, the design and innovation consultancy in Silicon Valley, a team of Ideo designers was working for Gyrus ACMI to develop new otolaryngology tools. In the early stages of the design process, the team was consulting a group of surgeons to identify issues with existing solutions and uncover their needs. During the meeting, a designer who wanted to articulate the idea that arose during the meeting scrambled together some odds and ends in the office and put together the above prototype. The surgeons immediately resonated with the prototype and started discussing further points of interest and improvement. After several cycles of development and refinement, Ideo ultimately delivered the Diego Powered Dissector System, pictured below. According to Perry Mykleby, senior director of marketing, Gyrus ACMI, ENT Division, Diego tripled revenues in the powered instrument product segment.

When working with a consultancy or supplier, it is common to communicate designs, especially functional designs, through long specification documents. In some cases, these documents can be hundreds of pages with the fines of details. Some practitioners are starting to question the practice and relying more on prototypes to communicate their designs to clients and suppliers. Todd Zaki Warfel, the founder and principle designer of user experience design consultancy message first and the author of "Prototyping: A Practitioner's Guide" explained in an interview with Johnny Holland Magazine:

"In nearly every case in the past three years, prototypes have become our documentation. There are a few exceptions, where we need to include some supplemental documentation, say a 10-20 page document to specify some business rules that happen on the backend, which aren't clear from the prototype. But I'm willing to do a 20 page spec document and a prototype instead of a 200 page spec."

Build to think

In engineering, students are taught to and practitioners think deeply before setting out to build. However, as the product or system becomes increasingly complex, it becomes increasingly difficult to consider all factors while designing. Facing this reality, designers are no longer just "thinking to build" but also "building to think." By getting hands on and trying to create prototypes, unforeseen issues are highlighted early, saving costs related with late stage design changes. This rapid iterative cycle of thinking and building is what allows designers to learn rapidly from doing.

Creating interfaces often benefit from the "build to think" approach. For example, in trying to layout the automotive cockpit, one can simply list all the features, buttons, and knobs that must be incorporated. However, by prototyping the cabin does one really start to think about how the layout should be to the driver in order to avoid confusion while maximizing comfort. This then allows the designer iterate on their initial concept to develop something that is more intuitive and refined.

Rough, rapid, and right (test early, fail often, succeed faster)

There is a tendency for designers to create the perfect prototype before sharing with others and testing on users. However, in the design community at Stanford University, prototyping is often done under the mantra "rough, rapid, and right." The belief is that the purpose of prototyping is beyond communication and is to test underlying assumptions and answer questions regarding the design. Therefore, prototyping should be done quickly and just good enough to answer the questions at hand. For example, to test how users interacts with new interface concepts for a phone, sketching screenshots and buttons can answer just as many questions as a highly refined software prototype on mock hardware.

In ME310, a full year project-based design innovation course at Stanford University, a team of students working with BMW was given the challenge of "improving the open air experience" in a 3-series convertible. As most convertible drivers know, driving top-down at high speeds on the highway creates a bizarre recirculation effect where inconsistent wind blows from the back seat to the front. Hairs of the front passengers are blown into their faces, and the noise is distractingly annoying. The current solution is a clunky mesh screen that is installed in the back seats effectively turning the four-seat convertible into a two-seater.

The student team, hypothesizing that the noise is the main source of annoyance, created the five-minute prototype pictured above to test the effects of shielding just the ears of the driver. Testing the sunglass and plastic cup prototype confirmed that ridding the noise made for a much better open air experience. As BMW drivers couldn't be expected to look like clowns on the road, the student team then tested the newest technology in noise cancellation embodied in the Bose QuietComfort 2, the most advanced headphones available to consumers at the time. Testing the headphones revealed that while they worked perfectly in airplanes, they were incapable of canceling out wind noise in a convertible. Further consultation with a professor specializing in signal processing uncovered that no technology was currently available to remove inconsistent noise in convertibles. Through two rapid iterations of prototyping and testing that took less than a day, the student team was able to test a correct assumption, an inadequate solution, and move onto the next concept.

For another project in ME310, a team working for Volkswagen was given the challenge of creating a new interface for the non-driving functions of a car, i.e. climate control, audio control, etc. Noting the recent advancements in computer vision, the team identified early on that gesture control could be a viable alternative to the increasingly complicated button-and-knob paradigm of today. However, before developing and adapting the technology for automotive use, the team wanted to verify that such a system would be intuitive to the user. Over the weekend, the team created a driving simulator and a "fake" interface where the video feed capturing the gestures were sent to a human operator behind the scenes controlling the different features of the driving simulator. Through testing this prototype, the team was not only able verify the intuitiveness of gesture control but also discover various gestures that were natural to people. The team then spent the next eight months implementing a real gesture recognition system in a prototype car.

Various prototypes for various purposes, industries

When suggested rough, rapid prototyping, people often respond with "you can't prototype what we do," or "we have to build the whole thing before we can test it." This is often due to the lack of imagination and the inability to see beyond the existing paradigm. With a little creativity, practitioners in the field of design and beyond are harnessing the power of prototyping to develop their products, services, processes and more.

The user interface and web design community is increasingly prototyping with paper before writing a single line of code. The time required to program software interactions and create screen shots is much more than the time it takes to draw several screen shots and switch between them by hand. The extra time gained by using paper prototypes can then be used to test more concepts and better refine them before writing the software. Above is an example video of a designer testing a website interaction by walking through the screen shots with the user.

In the video game industry, EA Games, the largest video game publisher in the US, is known to prototype their games by creating card games to simulate the interaction. Only after the card games are refined to the point where the experience is "sticky" are the first software prototypes made. Again, the resources saved by using a lower resolution prototyping medium allow EA to experiment with more concepts and ideas.

In the service industry, experience prototypes are regularly created where users are put through a role-play to experience the simulation of a service. Over the last decade, Ideo, has been working with more and more service providers in addition to product companies in order to redesign and create new customer experiences. Example clients include the American Red Cross, Mayo Clinic, and the Bank of America. Working with these companies, experience prototyping was critical in creating and testing new service concepts.

Even in the field of business and management, prototyping is being used to more effectively design business processes. Traditionally business process modeling have been done through workshops facilitated by process analysts and software modeling tools. Researchers Jonathan Edelman and Larry Leifer at Stanford University's Center for Design Research and Hasso Plattner Institute in Germany are experimenting with what they call Tangible Business Process Modeling (TBPM). TBPM utilizes dry-erasable acrylic blocks of different shapes and size as building blocks for the modeling process. Researchers are discovering that the very tangible and low-resolution prototyping tool invites more stakeholders in the workshops to participate in the model creation and iteration process. By using physical objects that everyone knows how to handle, more people are getting involved in the modeling process, allowing for faster iteration and higher quality outcomes. There are talks that the TBPM toolkits will be commercialized soon for businesses to implement.

Only in mankind's recently history has there been such a clear distinction between prototypes and final products. Before the age of mass manufacturing, every product was a prototype for the next product as craftsmen learned and improved from every version he or she created. With the coming of the age of science and analytical reasoning, man's ability to engineer and produce has reached levels never seen before. At the same time, we gained hubris, thinking that we could analyze our way into what we want, desire, and need. In a world where systems, technologies, and societies are becoming increasingly complicated, what we need now is to return to our roots where we prototyped and analyzed to the solutions. Let's harness the power of prototyping.

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The power of prototyping - Paris Innovation Review

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The word prototype may conjure images of sleekly crafted model cars at an auto show or the new hot gadget being demoed at CES three months prior to launch. Companies, on the other hand, often see prototypes as resource-intensive milestones that are avoided when possible.

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Sketching with David Kelley
You can make anything tangible through a rough and rapid prototype. Think of your prototype as a prop that invites others to experience your idea and helps you transform an abstract concept into a meaningful product or service.

Sketching is a foundational skill of prototyping and one of many ways you can make your ideas tangible.

This video is part of a lesson from our Hello Design Thinking online course.

choosing a selection results in a full page refresh

press the space key then arrow keys to make a selection

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Make Your Ideas Tangible Through Prototypes

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Sketching with David Kelley You can make anything tangible through a rough and rapid prototype. Think of your prototype as a prop that invites others to experience your idea and helps you transform an abstract concept into a meaningful product or service.

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Tip #2: How do you move from an idea to a prototype?