Practice : Rapid Prototyping
Purpose and Strategic Importance
Rapid Prototyping accelerates learning by creating low-fidelity models of potential solutions and testing them with customers before significant investment.
It reduces risk, reveals usability issues early, and ensures product decisions are grounded in evidence rather than opinion.
Description of the Practice
- Prototypes range from sketches to interactive wireframes.
- Tests focus on assumptions about usability, desirability, or value.
- Prototypes evolve quickly through iterative feedback.
How to Practise It (Playbook)
1. Getting Started
- Identify the riskiest assumption in your idea.
- Build a simple prototype addressing that assumption.
- Test with a handful of customers rapidly.
2. Scaling and Maturing
- Incorporate prototyping into discovery cadences.
- Use tools like Figma or InVision for speed and scale.
- Test multiple variations to explore design options.
3. Team Behaviours to Encourage
- Learning over perfection.
- Curiosity and openness to surprise.
- Willingness to discard weak ideas.
4. Watch Out For…
- Over-engineering prototypes.
- Mistaking prototype validation for full solution validation.
- Ignoring negative feedback.
5. Signals of Success
- Qualitative: Teams iterate confidently based on feedback.
- Quantitative: Reduced investment in ideas later abandoned.