Have you ever thought about how the most innovative digital products were made? Whether it’s the iPod, Uber, or Dropbox, they all started out the same: as an idea in someone’s mind.
But ideas alone are worth little. Transforming an idea into a sellable product is often a complex process. There is one essential step in this process that increases the likelihood of the product becoming a success: prototyping.
A prototype is a preliminary version of your product. It’s a physical or digital model that helps to explore, test your assumptions, gather feedback, and refine your idea. It's the tool that helps you “fail forward”, adjusting and iterating based on real-world experience to create a product that truly meets the needs of the user.
But how do you create prototypes for digital products?
There is no fixed formula for how to create a digital prototype. In fact, you can build it in many forms. When choosing a prototyping method, ask yourself the following questions: What’s the purpose of the prototype? Who is its target audience? How well do I know the method, or how quickly can I learn it? The right prototyping method depends on your answers to these questions.
Paper prototypes and digital prototypes
Two commonly used methods to build prototypes for digital products are paper prototypes and digital prototypes.
A paper prototype allows you to prototype at a low-fidelity level. Paper and pens are all you need to create paper prototypes. Scissors, rulers, cardboard, and tape maybe helpful in some cases. To build a paper prototype, you draw simple wireframes for each screen of the user journey. If you want to generate a somewhat realistic look and feel, you can cut the drawn screens and lay them on top of a smartphone.
Digital prototypes are created with a tool on a computer or tablet. You can create digital prototypes at a low-fidelity level by designing wireframes or at a high-fidelity level by creating realistic-looking user interfaces to generate a more authentic look and feel.
To get a better feel for how users will navigate between screens, most prototyping tools allow you to connect screens and make them clickable.
Our preferred tool for building digital prototypes is Figma. But it is also possible to create digital prototypes in PowerPoint or Keynote. If you want to create an even more realistic clickable prototype, you can use HTML or JavaScript. But we advise against prototyping at such a detailed level, as the design process is much more time-consuming. Thus, prolonging the feedback back loop.
When exploring how to bring an idea from intangible to tangible for the first time, we recommend beginning with low-fidelity prototypes created with pen and paper. Typically, you will discard and redraw the basic structure many times in the process of improving it. But that’s precisely the purpose at this stage. Once you have created a low-fidelity version that you believe appeals to users, it’s time to design more sophisticated digital prototypes.
Know what you want to explore and test
Your idea will have many components, so make clear what you want to explore and test before building a prototype. Prototyping is not about creating the entire solution. Build just enough to test your concept and try to make it better by integrating the learnings once you’ve gotten feedback.
Prototype the full customer experience
While it is not necessary and not recommended to prototype the entire solution, especially at the beginning, don’t neglect to test product components that might be less obvious. This includes things like how customers become aware of your product, install it, or interact with customer support.
"Prototype as much of the full customer experience as possible. Make the intangible tangible so you can’t overlook the less showy but incredibly important parts of the journey. You should be able to map out and visualize exactly how a customer discovers, considers, installs, uses, fixes, and even returns your product."
– Tony Fadell, co-creator of the iPod and the iPhone, and founder of Nest Labs
Test the prototype
Now that you’ve got a prototype ready, it’s time to gather feedback from stakeholders, including test users. Conducting user testing and user interviews are two great feedback options. Ensure that you conduct user tests as a clearly defined experiment, with a hypothesis that describes what you expect to see and how you will measure and validate it.
In user testing, you observe test users as they interact with the prototype. You typically tell them what you want them to achieve, but you don’t provide guidance on how to get there. Then, you observe if a user is able to achieve the stated goal and where they struggle. You then take these insights to refine your prototype until users reach an outcome effortlessly.
You can gather further insights by conducting user interviews. This involves asking test users a series of questions while or after they interact with your prototype.
Remember that the objective of testing your prototype is to learn about and improve your solution. Never try to defend your solution to test users.
What’s next?
Once you have built and refined a prototype that appeals to users, it's time to assess the feasibility and viability of your idea as you move towards building a minimum viable product (MVP).
Joël Sonderegger is the Founder & Managing Director at Voa Labs. He helps his team strategize, design, and engineer products that enable businesses to transform their ideas into digital solutions, while energetically steering all aspects of Voa Labs’ operations.
Previously, Joël was a VP of Product Management at Sygnum, the world's first digital asset bank. Prior to that, he worked at Zühlke and IBM, where he gained his passion for agile, high-tech environments in which creativity and collaborations are proactively encouraged.
Joël holds a Master of Business Innovation from the University of St. Gallen (HSG) and a Bachelor of Business Administration from Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW).
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