Fantastic Prototypes and where to find them

Maybe your app is not as intuitive as you assumed it was. Maybe your users’ needs differ from what you had expected. Maybe it should have looked completely different from what you had imagined in the beginning. This would burn money, time and energy that you could have used more valuable.

Luckily, there’s a way to answer all these questions before wasting a truckload of resources. You may have already guessed it: it’s prototyping. A prototype in digital product development is a simplified model of a product or feature. It gives you the opportunity to draft your Product. This allows you to test your hypotheses and iterate on your ideas along the way. Depending on your needs, prototypes can range from simple paper sketches to interactive Website-Dummies.

The main advantage of Prototypes is that most of the time you can create them quick and dirty. By creating a sketch or flow, you can easily put your assumptions to a first user test and detect possible improvements or mistakes you previously missed. Sometimes you can get a totally different point of view on your idea when you try to put it into practice with your team or your potential customers. Also, they can be helpful for handing over your ideas in a descriptive way.

We distinguish between three scopes of prototypes, depending on the use case.

Validation

• For quick user testing. The scope here is rather clear and simple.

Communication

• For Alignments handovers—these prototypes are very precise, either on the concept side for alignment with the team or on the functionality side for the handover to the developers

Presentation

• Here, we want to pitch an idea and be clear about our vision of a certain product. They are the most sophisticated ones because they showcase our understanding of the possible future for an already existing product.

Prototypes can be used at every phase of the product development process, Not only at the beginning. For us, they are also a very important tool to build a common ground for all stakeholders involved.

If you’re curious to learn more about our approach to using prototypes, and what main three questions you should ask yourself before building one, you should watch the new Digital Log by DPM on YouTube or listen to it on Spotify (or any other Podcatcher of your choice)