Prototype

Then your design team will use rapid prototyping to make your ideas tangible and enable others to interact with the idea. The goal is to make something quickly without using a lot of resources that will allow you to get closer to knowing what will work, what won't, and why.

Prototyping ideas early helps ensure that our solutions meet the needs of the people we are serving and actually solve the problems that matter most to them.

What steps can we take to ensure we engage with those stakeholders and co-create solutions to the problems they face and the needs they have during our design challenge?

Prototype

Use the tools and resources in this guidebook to accomplish the goals below. Once your design team has achieved these objectives, you will be in a strong position to advance to the next phase in your design process. Use the reflection tools in the Design Work Journal to evaluate whether your design team is ready to move to the next phase.

As a team, get familiar with what a prototype is and why we create them

Further develop your teams’ idea by discussing the details in more depth

Identify assumptions your team is making about why this solution will meet the needs of the stakeholder

Sketch out several different prototyping strategies your team might use

Determine the best prototyping strategy for the assumptions your team needs to test

Think about how your team is going to create an experience for the person testing your prototype in order to get the most honest feedback possible

Make a plan and delegate tasks and responsibilities for testing your prototype

Build the artifacts you need in order to create an experience for the stakeholder, test your prototype and get honest feedback

Overview of Prototype phase

Mindsets of Prototype phase

Stay optimistic that you can solve the problem
Prototype early and often in order to learn about your idea
Start small to make big change
Show don’t tell
Many cycles of prototyping are necessary to develop an idea

Overview of Prototype phase

The tools in the Prototype Phase are designed to help your team construct representations, models or small experiments to test the assumptions your team is making about why your solutions will create positive outcomes for your stakeholders.

These representations are intended to elicit feedback, answer specific questions about a concept and test assumptions embedded in the ideas.

Objectives of Prototype phase

The goal of this phase is to get your design team aligned around what assumptions you are making about your solution so that you can design low-resolution prototypes (low time investment, low cost, small scale).

At the end of this phase, all team members should be clear on how they are going to conduct a prototype to test an assumption embedded in the team’s solution.