- When a concept is made tangible we call it a prototype.
And these can be quite low fidelity.
In fact, the ability to rapidly and cheaply
flesh out a concept to test and refine
is often crucial for maintaining your momentum.
Low fidelity prototypes are made with
the materials at hand, often paper
and should not take a long time to put together.
Their goal is to iterate the idea with the team
or gather input from people or stakeholders
on a key moment in the product or service experience.
A key moment could be an app sign-in experience,
or how information is laid out on a screen.
Or the process of entering a theme park.
And the low fidelity prototype should explore
just enough to make it comprehensible.
The first step in creating a low fidelity prototype is to
determine what your team needs to explore in that prototype.
And not everything is right for prototyping.
For example, a core element of your concept
might be the financial model and while this can
be explored and modeled in a spreadsheet,
perhaps what you really need to
prototype with people is the service itself.
So focus your prototype attention there.
Once you've selected what to prototype,
use the materials available to you,
like paper or foam to start sketching the concept.
What do you want to show?
What aspects of the experience
can you skip to focus on the core interaction?
And what can you make that doesn't
require weeks of development.
For example, the Frog Team is currently exploring
how virtual reality can help burn victims
manage their pain during debriding.
Through observation, the team realized that heavy
headsets like the Oculus Rift can be uncomfortable.
Initially, they explored how different materials
could be used to reduce the weight.
Through constant prototyping, they realized
that the buckle can also be a problem for these patients
because they're usually reclining.
Now, they're prototyping different
ways to secure the headset.
That's an example of prototyping
to help a team iterate an idea.
And it's also useful to get input from real people.
For example, if you were prototyping
a voice activated car system, you might
have one of your teammates sit behind a screen
to speak like the car to see how people react.
Or if you're rethinking the aisle in a store,
you might get a teammate to act
out the new service interaction.
People are often quite willing to suspend
their expectations when prototypes
are presented as sketches and performances.
In a way they're not willing to do
when a concept looks too real
but fails to meet the interactivity
expectations that realness sets.
Low fidelity prototypes make a concept tangible
and can be done for all kinds of ideas,
from service experiences to apps to software.
They advance the thinking of the team
by enabling the team to use the product
and by enabling them to get feedback
on the ideas as they evolve.
A good, low fidelity prototype should
be easily edited and changed and
it should focus on just one or
two key moments of an experience
that are simple enough to enable
people to see its just a sketch.
You'll find that when your team sketches and
prototype as much as they sketch on a white board,
you probably have a good culture
of making base problem solving.
Again, it takes practice.
Find some examples of low fidelity prototypes
that are appropriate to your industry
and try them out, share them with the course community.