Four Tips For Making Rapid Prototyping Part Of Your Process

Rapid prototyping is a useful tool in product discovery as a whole. On top of that, it is not only an instrument for product managers, but for designers, engineers, researchers, and every other company it is useful as well. There are a couple of best practices you should keep in mind to make sure that you get the most out of rapid prototyping services. In this article you can find some of the best tips and how these can be implemented into the company’s workflow. 

Test with real users

One of the tips you should use when utilizing rapid prototyping is testing the prototypes with real users. Selecting the right participants is critical in this case. The ideal candidates are users who have requested a specific product or feature. On the other hand, you may also want people who meet the criteria of your target personas as a participant for the prototyping tests. The best way to test with real users is by combining these two different types of participants.

Establish a goal

On top of that, it is also smart to establish a goal for the prototype tests. In fact, you should do this before you even manufacture a prototype. At this moment you should wait a second so you can identify what you are trying to find out by performing a test. Your test goal might be to validate a product concept, but you could also test the usability of the design. There are of course many more possible goals. 

Include the stakeholders

There are of course many more tips you can employ in order to use rapid prototyping in your process. Rapid prototyping is also helpful to different team members across the company. This includes product designers, product managers, marketers, and way more employees. Results gathered from testing and user interviews can give you useful insights, while it will also provide you the opportunity to get buy-in on product decisions when all stakeholders are involved. 

Make it quick

Another tip you should keep in mind is by making it quick. Rapid prototyping of course has its name for a reason, this process has to be done rapidly. Do not try to develop the most impressive prototype, you should not spend a lot of time in order to make it perfect. This is not needed at all. Rapid prototyping namely has a goal to get your ideas out and test them.