- Experiences are experienced.
Designing an experience in words,
on post-it notes, on a whiteboard
or in wire frames will never explain
the experience as well as an experience of it.
Prototyping is in essence sketching an idea
in time and form, both physical and digital.
Like a sketch on a whiteboard,
they are disposable and changeable,
but nothing puts your ideas to the test faster
than making them experienceable.
What prototyping will mean for your industry can vary widely.
A prototype for an app might be a strip of paper
with screens on it encased in a mock-up of a phone
to get quick feedback.
While for an oil and gas product,
it might mean modeling a substation in Legos
to facilitate a conversation between potential partners.
For something as abstract as insurance products,
prototyping might mean trialing a new underwriting approach
with 10 brokers using just a storyboard.
Even those these examples are very different,
the common goals are to swiftly learn
from interacting with the prototype,
to share it within the team and with real people,
and to be able to quickly adapt it with what you've learned.
Similarly, what prototyping means
throughout your iterations
will change as you refine the concept
towards a market launch.
For example, that prototype app might first be paper screens,
but as the concept is refined further,
it might become simple wire frames
that let people explore the interactivity more.
Effective prototyping is about selecting
the information you need to learn about right now,
in this iteration, and creating an expression of that
at only the level of fidelity needed
to get you enough information
to inform your next iteration.
Because of this focus on what we need to know now,
prototyping comes in many forms,
from paper and performance
to highly refined experiences.
Prototypes generally go from open to specific.
Teams iterate quickly through prototypes
and each iteration tends to bring
greater specificity to the work as the concept moves
from an early exploratory stage to deeper conceptual modeling
and eventually onto the highest levels
of specification before the go to market realization begins.
At Frog, we generally look at prototypes
as serving three purposes.
The first is framing the iteration.
The need to decide which question to prototype
is core to the process of aligning the team
to what's important in this iteration
in order to best advance the design.
The second is learning from others.
Prototypes enable us to engage people
and stakeholders in the experience
to give us immediate feedback on the ideas.
The third is refine and make.
Defining what we learn from making the prototype
and sharing it with others
helps us be clear about the decisions we've made
and to be able to communicate the evolution
of the idea within the team and with our stakeholders.
Getting good at prototyping requires a clear eye
for what is just enough for the prototype to explore.
Often, teams are tempted to put everything into a prototype,
believing that the stakeholders and people
won't be able to see past the gaps into the core experience.
The very sketch nature of prototyping helps this.
You'll find that someone in your foam core mock-up
of a retail environment will easily accept
the pretend environment and imagine themselves in a store
and focus on the elements you have mocked up
with greater fidelity.
If your mock-up is a hand-drawn interface
with a marker beside it,
you'll find people are often very willing
to make their own thoughts tangible for you.
If your team gives into the temptation
to take just another two weeks to get everything in,
you'll find the process of quickly iterating ideas
slows back down to a business as usual pace.
If you take little else from this course,
I hope that you take the intention
to make light, fast prototypes
and share them with others as fast as you can.
I'd urge you to reduce your presentation decks
in favor of walking your stakeholders
through these experiences.
Put them in the user's shoes
and let them experience your ideas.
Your stakeholders will understand the ideas better.
Your team will be better aligned
on what you're making if you do this.
You'll tend to make products and services
that are more meaningful and desirable.