How to prevent five pitfalls when prototyping.
My company frequently builds prototypes for client solutions, or as we prefer to call them, POC (Proof of Concept).
For any prototype to be successful, there need to be rules. First of all, prototypes are not the final product, so don’t require a high level of refinement. They should rather exemplify the basic ideas and leave room for adding more or alernative ideas, that will eventually lead to the final product / service.
Jared Spool, founder and head of User Interface Engineering, has put together 5 potential pitfalls for project teams to carefully prepare for when building prototypes:
Pitfall #1 - Focus too much on the deliverable and not on the learning.
This is very important because the main objective is to learn from the prototype and the development process. The finishing touches come with the end-product/service.
Pitfall #2 - Too much converging, not enough diverging.
The prototype should help to test new ideas and to help generate even more ideas.
Pitfall #3 - Working in the wrong fidelity.
Low fidelity is fine, the prototype is not the final product. If e.g. you want to showcase your web app is based on responsive design principles, though, the prototype should reliably demonstrate availability on the smartphone as well as the big screen, etc.
Pitfall #4 - Too little evaluating.
The prototype process runs through 4 distinct phases: Planning, Implementing, Measuring and Learning, with Measuring and Learning being the most important and insightful ones for the final product and their users.
Pitfall #5 - Concentrating on a single prototyping tool.
Particularly in the application software development space, there is a wide range of tools available to develop prototypes. Some on them are a one way road (e.g. paper prototyping), not allowing to build the final product with it. Yet they may help to quickly put together a working prototype. Project teams should be open to trying out new tools and methodologies to help instigate the ideation and learning flow.
After all, Prototyping is the rendering of ideas to understand them better before implementing them!
Read Jared’s full article here:
http://www.uie.com/articles/pitfalls_prototyping?utm_source=UIE+Subscribers&utm_campaign=2195c6ac11-UIEtips_pitfalls_prototyping_10_30_2013&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_382de78e4c-2195c6ac11-28007265
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