You don’t need a big idea. You need a small prototype.
By: Gianluca Amato, Lato Società Benefit
Tags: AI, Design Thinking, Prototyping, Innovation, Business

Photo by Sara Cervera on Unsplash

How many times have you been so excited about a new idea, that you’ve had to quickly whip up some wireframes and screens in order to show your product to potential users/funders?

If you were born with a normal amount of ambition, probably many.

We were, too.

Recently, the Free University of Bozen (Unibz) asked as at Lato to show people and learners how the prototyping process works – and why it is so important for a startup.

During a 2-days workshop, we were able to put our hands on 6 different social impact ideas.

Every idea was different, valuable, wholesome, and tried to tackle an important problem of a specific Italian area.

The only problem? They were just that: ideas.

Big, ambitious, ideas, but with no clear path ahead of them.

Enter LATO

How can a group of designers kickstart the process that turns dreams into actions?

We started with the biggest problem: all of those ideas were untested, unproven assumptions about a specific task that a certain user would be willing to do.

The risk of wasting budget in order to get tackle those wicked problems was high.

So we proposed: why don’t we build a prototype for each proposal, discuss it with everyone, and try to gather in one place the assumptions at the core of every idea?

It worked smooothly. After a couple of iterations, everyone was aligned around a concrete concept of what their idea was really about (and why it was worth of developing it or not), while every promoter’s initial pitch was more of an aspirational statement.

But why start a prototype instead of — for example — a business model?

Why start building something before having a clear idea of where are you going?

Your idea needs to be finanacially sound, right?

You need to have a cool name, right?

You need to put together a team of wholesome people, right?

No, no, no and no. In order to see if your idea is worth any effort, you just have to disable your creativity for a bit and start thinking like a potential buyer/user.

The reason is simple.

Having a prototype, or a cheap mock-up of your product is pivotal for studying customer problems or testing features.

It allows you to effectively demonstrate your product idea to a group of potential users.

It gives you the time to get user feedback on the product and adapt it and improve it. Lastly, it gives you a time period in which you have a ‘product’ to show and it makes it easier to convey your message to potential investors or stakeholders.

Though it may seem like a luxury to have the ability to create physical prototypes, the benefits that a prototype can bring to your business idea are immense.

But keep this in mind: you don’t need to prototype your entire business. You just have to select the one interaction that you think is fundamental; or the one interaction that you are not sure about; or the one piece of the user journey that is based on an assumption.

And put it outhere in the world. And test it.

It should be easy, cheap, fast, repeatable. And remember: you need data; you don’t need perfect data.

We’re all in cupcake Business

Just imagine for a moment your business idea is to create wedding cakes.

Beautiful, marvellous, happy wedding cakes to sell for happy wedding day.

This is your business dream, this is all that you can think about. But you don’t have any experience, just your passion, your motivation, and some basic skills.

Would you start with a five-stories, hand-sculpted, baroque-inspired, fruit-layered, golden leaf-plated, 10k € cake?

No. You’ll probably start from a cupcake. And build your way from there.

You’ll try different essences combinations, different layers, different textures, different pralines.

You’ll test them, you’ll review them, you’ll offer them in order to gather feedback, and then, finally, you’ll have enough data to know how to build a wedding cake that someone really wants.

So, next time you’ll have the idea, instead of registering your domain, just build a cupcake first.