Rapid Prototyping
Test and validate a product in a cost-effective manner.
In the manufacturing industry, rapid prototyping is used to generate models of a product for testing before producing large quantities of products to save the cost of production. Similarly, designers have adopted rapid prototyping to create application prototypes like sketches, wireframes, and mockups in less time to validate and iterate the process to solve real user needs.
Rapid prototyping starts after an ideation phase. In the ideation phase, you will be able to gather as many ideas as possible and find the best solutions among them. By taking the best solutions, you will be able to create the prototypes with rapid iterations to get to a product where you tried to solve the user pain points, And now you use these rapid prototypes that are built to test whether the pain points are solved or not. There are many ways rapid prototyping can be done by using sketches, wireframes, mockups, etc.
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1. Sketches
At the initial stages of product design, sketching is the best and most cost-effective process to do multiple variations at a very quick pace and select the best one which solves the user pain points. By using sketches, you can validate and iterate the designs rapidly and make cost-effective prototypes.
Refer to this case study on how printed iPad sketched screens helped in testing and providing a direction on how much information is required to find the most important ones. But similar testing can be done on hand-drawn sketches too.
2. Wireframes
Wireframes are known as screen blueprints and skeletal frameworks for the application. They are used in creating interactive prototypes so that users can experience how the application works by interacting with it. They will help you to maintain focus on concept, structure, content, and functionality. And these hold more value as they give a clear and relatable interactive experience for the user while testing. There are many tools available to create wireframes like (UXPin), Balsamiq, Axure, etc.
But wireframes lack visual aspects which influence the emotions of the user, so if your intent is to know the emotional states of the user, wireframe prototyping is not an effective way.
Refer to this case study on how wireframes helped in testing and providing a direction for a product related to tourism
3. Mockups
Mockups give you the feel of a final product. Users will focus more on visual design aspects like colors, typeface, content, etc which influence emotions rather than the concept, layout. It’s better to validate mockups at the final stage of the design so that the validation will be on whether the visual design decisions made are meeting the intent. There are many tools available to create mockups like Sketch, Figma, etc
Refer to this case study on how Skyspace, a cloud-based app was tested with both wireframes and mockups to get different takeaways at each stage
You understood what are the three kinds of prototypes, now which factors are good to test in which prototype is showcased below.
By using the above techniques, prototyping can be done rapidly for your product. At each iteration, these prototypes are tested to get insights from the users and these insights are applied in the next iteration.
Tips / Best Practices
- Have an ideation session before starting rapid prototyping to gather all the ideas.
- There is no rule that you need to stick to one technique, perform all the techniques to identify all levels of usability issues.
- Use grayscale or black and white for wireframes, to maintain focus on the concept.
- Don’t invest too much time in creating prototypes that satisfy all the cases, prioritize the use cases that require testing, and prototype them.
- If you are unable to decide on the best idea, validate the ideas with users and select the most appropriate one based on the feedback.
- Have a detailed peer review on the prototypes before finalizing and testing them to get accurate insights from the users.
- Sync with the research facilitator clearly on the way he wants to run the prototype and update it accordingly.
Checklist
- Be clear on goals and problems.
- Refine all the ideas and select the best ideas of them to start prototyping.
- Check clearly whether the prototype is accomplishing the scenario and its goal.
- Check whether the content in the prototype is understandable for the user.
- Ensure that the prototype resembles the way the research facilitator wants to run the usability.
Quick Question
What is the order of rapid prototyping?
1. Ideation>testing>rapid prototyping>iterate
2. Rapid prototyping>ideation>testing>iterate
3. Ideation>rapid prototyping>iterate>testing
4. Ideation>rapid prototyping>testing>iterate [correct answer]
Leave your answer in the comments section below!
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