Building to learn: the role of prototyping in Design
By: Christian Cantrell
Tags: Design Thinking, Design, User Experience, Prototyping, UX

Taking Time to Prototype

The prototyping phase of product development is often sacrificed because design or product teams don’t think they have time in their schedules. But the reality is that you probably don’t have time not to prototype.

One thing that over twenty years in the software industry has taught me is that everybody prototypes, but not everyone plans for it. In other words, no matter how experienced you are as a designer or a product owner, the chances that a new product or feature will resonate perfectly with customers exactly as it was originally conceived is pretty low — especially when you’re trying to deliver entirely new kinds of user experiences across new kinds of devices and platforms. If you skip the design prototyping phase, that means you are prototyping with your customers which is by far the least efficient and most costly way to learn.

The reality is that you probably don’t have time not to prototype.

The more learning you do before launching a new product or feature, the more confidence you can have that it will resonate with end users right away, and the better the chances are that you can devote the next release to innovating rather than addressing customer complaints — or worse, customer indifference. Although it may feel counterintuitive, sometimes the best way to move faster is to first slow down.

The global design company IDEO has a great saying about prototyping:

“If a picture is worth 1,000 words, a prototype is worth 1,000 meetings.”

If you’ve ever experienced how a high-fidelity, interactive prototype can facilitate decision making and drive alignment across organizational silos, it’s hard to imagine shipping anything without taking time to prototype it first.

Prototyping doesn’t just save time during short- and long-term product development lifecycles; it can also dramatically reduce friction around innovation. Throughout my career, I have seen countless good ideas — ideas that could have been significant revenue generators — collapse beneath the weight of debate or indecision only to be resurrected by future unsuspecting resident entrepreneurs. Prototyping can disrupt these cycles by giving stakeholders something concrete to evaluate. The faster you can bring an idea to life, the sooner you can make a deliberate and well-informed decision to either take it to market or put it to rest.

Everybody prototypes, but not everyone plans for it.

The last point I want to make around taking the time to prototype has to do with misconceptions around product schedules. Most people — even experienced product owners — assume that the most difficult aspect of building a successful product is the implementation. That hasn’t been my experience. While anything that adds value to customers’ lives certainly does take time to build, if you always knew exactly what customers wanted, and exactly the user experience they would ultimately find most intuitive and engaging, figuring out how to give it to them probably wouldn’t stop you from being successful. It is usually far more difficult to get users’ attention in the first place, hold that attention long enough that they begin developing habits around your product, and then consistently delight them. Until you are confident that you know what you should build, don’t waste time trying to build it. Prototype it instead. Stop building to ship until you’ve first built to learn.