presentation prototype definition

ampliFI Loyalty Solutions

The Climate Corporation

San Diego Gas & Electric

Eileen Duffner

How To Give a Prototype Presentation (and How To Be a Good Audience for One!)

Whether it’s to a client, a development team, or your fellow designers, presenting prototypes is a great skill for consultants and product designers to have. Here are some tips for helping your audience understand your prototype.

• Start with the ‘why’: By reminding your audience of the context, you get everyone on the same page. Start by going over the big-picture goals, where your prototype fits into the overall project, and any specific constraints you are working within.
• Tell your audience what they are about to see: Even for a really simple prototype, it’s important to verbally explain it before showing any screens. Call out the basic steps or events that happen in the flow, and if it is complex it might be helpful to show a simplified user flow diagram to highlight where steps loop or events trigger previous states. Call out the events or steps that a user will encounter: it helps them understand what they should be looking for, and the steps they should see when you do show them your prototype.
• Make it crystal-clear: Use arrows, color coded sticky notes or text to guide your audience through the prototype. Perhaps put blank white pages in between sets of screens so that there is a visual and verbal cue that there will be a jump in the flow or you are moving on to a different part. If the same screen shows up multiple times during a process, copy your artboard multiple times and put them in the correct order so it’s clear where it lives in the process. If you, as the presenter, are using a prototyping tool that allows for hotspots or triggers to move between screens be sure to set the hotspot/triggers as this paints an even clearer picture of how a user gets from A to B. This helps the client understand while you are presenting and prevents you from being able to make a wrong step. It also helps the devs when they dive into coding understanding where things will live on the page, and what treatment should be given at what point in time.
• Tell a story: Storytelling helps make the product real, and helps convey the passage of time, an integration or a handoff to another part of the process. Remember that products are used by people — who is going to use yours, how will it be a part of their day, what will the user have to do, and what will be an integration?
• Practice! Walk through your presentation by yourself and then also with a friend or colleague who isn’t familiar with the project. A fresh set of eyes can help you catch any confusing gaps in your story or correct mistakes like spelling and spacing, before your real presentation.

If you’re on the receiving end of a prototype presentation, here’s how you can help make it valuable and productive:

• Approach the prototype with an open mind: There are often multiple ways to interpret a solution. Sometimes a button could work just as well as a link, or an icon — don’t let your preconceived ideas about the design of the feature or application block you from seeing other ways to solve the problem.
• Don’t let the product you currently have limit the product you could have: When a prototype is intended to replace your current system, it can be tempting to feel more comfortable with the familiarity of what you already have. But remember, if your existing system was perfect, you probably wouldn’t be trying to update it in the first place. If a prototype is a stark contrast to what you have currently, it might take time to let it sink in and understand or visualize how this new functionality will fit into your workflow or system. Sometimes, though, a change that seems drastic can end up making your system faster, more powerful, and more user friendly.
• Be willing to give constructive feedback: If you like something, say so! And if you have concerns, speak up. Ask for time to think over a prototype if there are parts that you are unsure about and then clearly articulate why you do or don’t like it, or you do or don’t think it will work. Your perspective will only make the product stronger.

Prototyping is a great design thinking tool –and the power of a prototype is enhanced when everybody can understand and react to it. A clear, engaging presentation, followed by thoughtful and open discussion, will help your final product be the best it can be.

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What is a prototype? Definition, types, and prototyping methods

Digital development is unmatched today. Every day, technology evolves.

Given this rapid pace, how should you, as a product manager, know what technology is most suitable for your product, what features have become the industry’s norm, and what people expect from your product?

In this guide, we’ll show you how to build and test a prototype to help you save time and resources on unnecessary ideas.

What is a prototype?

A prototype is a simple visualization of the product to test the concept.

There are thousands of new ideas that originate every day to solve a particular problem. Executing an idea can be a long and expensive process. Alongside this, no one can, with absolute certainty, say that their vision will work or that users will ultimately want and use their products. Sometimes even great ideas fail because they are overly complicated to use or understand.

Agile development pivots around faster time to market, learning, integration, and adaptability. A prototype is built on the principle of failing fast, freely experimenting, and learning while trying to reach the desired result. Finding failures propels learning and optimizes solutions to reach your goal.

What is the primary purpose of prototyping?

Teams build prototypes with varying degrees of fidelity to capture design concepts and test them on users. You can refine and validate your designs with prototypes to ensure that you are building the right thing your user will use, without wasting time and resources. Because of this, prototyping is a cost-effective way to learn from failure, promoting innovation and creativity.

In the product discovery phase, it’s plausible that the product team has numerous compelling ideas. However, there are many initial uncertainties (e.g., technical feasibility, seamless process fit, etc.). The best way to avoid letting uncertainties drive the decision is to test the concept and learn about the possibilities. Prototyping provides an opportunity to test the wildest, craziest ideas, and decide whether to drop them or push them forward.

What are the 4 methods of prototyping?

You can select different methods of prototyping based on the need and the goal of the insights gained.

1. Feasibility prototypes

To test the technical possibility of the concept. The feasibility prototype is built with a precise granularity to the proposed feature. Next, the development team creates a high-level architecture description and writes enough code to test the technical challenges and possibilities of the concept.

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This prototype then serves as a ground for engineering the entire product. A feasibility prototype is usually created while building new algorithms, new approaches, or new structures to test attainability and push boundaries

2. Low-fidelity user prototypes

To test the usability of the flow. Low-fidelity user prototypes are most like wireframes created in tools like Figma or Invision by the UX/product designers. This prototype aims to identify any user issues early on and test how the feature works and fits in the entire process

3. High-fidelity user prototypes

A realistic-looking prototype that takes a bit more time and resources, but ensures stimulation per the final product. These prototypes are to test concepts that are non-negotiable but can be adapted in a better way.

For example, when companies wanted to try virtual reality before people knew about VR, they couldn’t explain it to people with wireframes and sketches and get their feedback. Instead, they had to develop a high-fidelity user prototype with the goal of testing whether the user would like the product.

4. Live data prototypes

A prototype embedded with analytical tools to collect live data and actions from real users. Live-data prototypes help when you have a product and want to see if the customer will be interested in the new feature.

For example, if you want to include a virtual tryout feature for your shopping app, you can release a designed page explaining the new feature and ask the user to subscribe if they want to use it. You add the tracking code to the design and release it to a few actual customers (beta testers) to test the concept’s likeability. This way, you get insight into your idea, making it clear whether it’s worth the investment

5 ways to create prototypes

Here are five of the most common ways to build out a prototype.

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1. Wireframes

As agile ways of working progress, many tools are introduced to help with the process. Similarly, numerous tools are available to create simple prototypes and tests. Some of these tools are so intuitive that anyone, even on a beginner level, can use them to create a simple wireframe to test their ideas. Figma and Invision are two user-friendly tools that can be used with many things pre-structured

A prototype created with slides with some shapes, colors, and texts. One can make a few design concepts on slides and present them to stakeholders for a common understanding. As the famous saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. In the early stages, when there is a need for internal buy-in, the best way to present a concept is to create some basic designs in slides. It is easier to sell and bring people on the same page while showing some pictures instead of plain text and charts

3. Sketch on paper

A fundamental handmade design with pen and paper. An illustration prototype can be used in a test format called guerilla testing. It’s the simplest form of testing to validate high-level ideas and understand potential problems. This test can be done anywhere on the street, in a mall, or wherever you find your target group

4. Interactive frontend

A minimum coded frontend where the user can interact with the design, but the response is predefined and not dynamic from any backend. This prototype helps the development process to identify the flow, allowing the developers to identify the technical solution and needs early on. You can also use this prototype with the end user to identify problems with the flow (e.g., if the user struggles to navigate your app to fill out a form for a reclaim request.

5. Conceptual videos

Videos are usually created to generate interest and demonstrate how exceptional the new product will be. The purpose of a video prototype can be to get buy-in, potential investment, or validation. Conceptual videos focus on vision at a high level to create anticipation. This prototype can also be used as a guide while creating detailed features during the development phase

How to choose the right prototype

As we have seen, there are several different types of prototyping and several options for creating prototypes. Therefore, understanding which method will suit your product at a given time is essential.

1. Identify the lifecycle stage of your product

There are three main stages in a product lifecycle:

• Early stage  — When the idea originates and there is no existing product or user base
• Growth stage  — When the product expands and gains a substantial number of users
• Maturity stage  — When the product reaches its peak and provides the best possible service to users

2. Identify the need to create a prototype (how, what, or why)

Your particular requirements will inform your choice of the most suitable prototyping method. The most common needs while choosing to create prototypes are:

• Gaining insight into how the existing product and features are utilized and perceived by the user. The need here is to know the how
• Validating ideas for a new feature and concept to identify the potential next development. The need here is to identify what to build
• Finding potential issues with an existing feature. The need is to identify the why

3. Define the outcome/results from the prototype

The most crucial step is choosing the method and the type of prototype that will help you achieve your goals and objectives.

Let’s look at a product team’s top goals for the prototype stage:

Validate customer need

The goal is to find the market’s most demanded or accepted feature. This helps to avoid wasting resources on building things that might not result in the company’s desired effect

Test technical feasibility and set your course

The idea might be fantastic, but the organization might need to upgrade their technical foundation to achieve the goal. There might be a shift in the market (e.g., artificial intelligence integration), which requires you to identify the course of action needed for your product to be ready to adapt changes in technology

Improve your product’s aesthetics to meet customers’ standards

When you already have a product, your users might still need help understanding it or be unsatisfied with the current iteration. Your goal here is to discover how to make it user-friendly to create the best experience.

One example of a concrete goal here can be improving the Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Gain stakeholder buy-in

Showcasing for stakeholders allows you to align on the expectation and to receive budget sanctions. The goal is to sell your idea internally through data backup and testing. It is specifically applicable when the management is reluctant to change and assign a budget for the need

Guide the development team to build the right product

The goal is to set a vision and provide a guiding principle to everyone involved in development. When working on details, it’s often easy to lose sight of why. You can build a prototype to keep everyone on the same page. This can serve as a map for seeing where products deviate from the vision

Prototyping is an effective method to validate ideas, test feasibility, secure buy-in, and create alignment. There are different prototyping methods that are suitable for different needs. However, once identified correctly, prototyping can help save time and resources while creating value early in product discovery.

Prototyping allows us to build the right thing while maintaining speed and avoiding wastefulness. It also validates with actual data, allowing us to learn and iterate, which helps bring the needed resources together to evolve new technology and push boundaries.

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Presenting Your Prototype: What You Can Learn about Giving Amazing Presentations from Steve Jobs, Y Combinator, and TED

Getting to the point where you have a working prototype can be a long but fulfilling road. By now, you’re so familiar with your own product that it’s probably hard to imagine what it looks like to an objective observer. You know everything about how it functions, what it’s designed for, and what you want people to notice when they first interact with it.

But if you’re going to present your product to potential investors or a manufacturer – in short, if you want to take it to market at all – you’ll have to be able to step back and observe your product as if you’re encountering it for the first time. It’s the only way to ensure that you craft a presentation that offers your audience the information they’ll need and want to know – not just what you want to tell them.

So how do you create an effective prototype presentation? In a sense, you do it the same way that you create any great presentation.

Set the scene, but be concise.

When you present your prototype, you probably won’t have tons of time – maybe 10 to 20 minutes. When you’re presenting to potential investors, it’s best to get to the point as quickly as you can without seeming inelegant. As Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator, says , “Say what you’re doing as quickly as possible, preferably in the first sentence.”

The reason for this is that you don’t want people wondering why they’re listening to you for any longer than necessary. If you start off with a rambling story or details that don’t illustrate your point, you risk your audience getting bored, getting frustrated, or both.

When you’re presenting a prototype, start off strong by saying what you’ve created and why you created it. This should allow your listeners to mentally put your product in context and get ready for what you’re going to say next.

One important note: If you’re an excellent public speaker, you can probably get away with breaking some rules, including this one. If you know you’re great at crafting well-framed, funny, engaging presentations, just do what works for you – while ensuring that you cover all your product’s necessary details.

Refine your slides, then refine them some more.

Slides can work wonders for a presentation, emphasizing and driving home your most important points. Plus, they give the audience somewhere to look besides just at you – which can make everyone in the room a little more comfortable.

However, as Carmine Gallo writes in his Forbes article “ 11 Presentation Tips You Can Still Learn from Steve Jobs ,” most people use way too much text on their slides. “The average PowerPoint slide has forty words. In the first three minutes of Steve Jobs’ iPhone presentation, he uses a grand total of nineteen words (twenty-one if you include dates). Those words are also distributed across about twelve slides,” he says.

When you’re creating your slides, go heavy on the visuals and edit your text down to the most important, effective words you can use. Then go back and cut half of those out.

Decide on your delivery.

Anyone who took a Speech class in high school knows just how important delivery is. There are essentially two ways to deliver your presentation: you can memorize it word-for-word, or you can use notecards.

Either method can be successful, but if you have the time and the presentation is important enough – if it’s for a meeting with investors who are already highly interested, for example – you should try to memorize.

If you do decide to memorize, however, make sure that you know your lines backward and forward. Otherwise, you can end up in what Chris Anderson of TED calls “the valley of awkwardness” : “Their words will sound recited, or there will be painful moments where they stare into the middle distance, or cast their eyes upward, as they struggle to remember their lines. This creates distance between the speaker and the audience.”

If you don’t think you can get through this valley, Anderson advises, just stick to notecards and practice until you can get through them smoothly, with minimal referencing.

Giving a great prototype presentation can help propel your product toward a successful entrance into the market. Want to learn more about taking your new product to market? Read our blog post “A Brief Guide to Taking Your Product to Market: What Comes After Perfecting Your Product? “ If you’re still working on developing your prototype, read our e-book “Product Prototyping: Getting it Right the First Time .”

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Guide to Achieving the Best Presentation Prototype

• CNC Machining Prototype
• Guide to Achieving the Best…

Designers often find it tasking to make the market fully grasp their creative products. This is because most clients want cheaper products quickly that are of good quality and design. The desired features, however, happen to oppose and constrain each other in this modern industrial life. For this reason, presentation prototypes play a vital role in the success of a new product. This is especially crucial in a globally intense market. Luckily, the evolution of tech over the years allows us to deal with the most arising issues. Rapid prototype services are sometimes costly in terms of money and time. We at Creatingway, however, plan well in advance and use current tech like virtual and rapid prototyping tools.

How We Can Do The Best Presentation Prototype?

What is a presentation prototype.

There are a couple of stages to the product creation process. Each stage has varying needs with regard to the prototype parts. There are also varying demands depending on the type of industry the prototype will end up in. Thus, the definition of a presentation prototype depends on the usages and demands.

Most clients use presentation models to gather info on user needs. They also want to showcase proof of concept to the higher-ups in management. Others want to validate system specs while some are simply exploring design problems and usability. Moreover, some clients want to resolve errors in the early design stages and validate changing user needs. They may also be seeking to increase user involvement or create a marketing demo.

At Creatingway, we offer the option of creating a detailed prototype that is full-scale and fully works. We can also build it like a façade like in Hollywood sets that only have fronts. Before we make any presentation prototype, we must define its goal. This aids us in determining its level of detail.

Why Must You Build a Presentation Model for a New Product?

To survive in the current market set up, your product must be cheaper than that of your rival. This while still keeping high quality and matching it to your client’s changing needs. A quick product cycle means that ore frequent changes to a product are vital. We experts have to thus use fixed resources to produce top-notch products in a short period.

In such a case, successfully creating one product may not be enough to sustain a business. The remaining sure path to success is to create an array of top-notch products ay great consistency. Luckily, our experts know the secret to the fine execution of critical stages in creating presentation models. This helps us be able to persuade the market and clients.

What Problems do We Face when Creating Presentation Prototypes?

Though there are pros to prototyping in product creation, there are few drawbacks that we are likely to face in the process. It is worth noting that misplaced prototyping efforts do not add value to the final product-creation efforts. They actually end up being more costly in terms of effort, time, money, and resources. Below are a few common errors and issues our experts face during prototype creation.

Material Option and Alternate

Most products often end up in specific industries. A few of them include the medical sector, automobile sector, and aerospace sectors. These products thus have unique needs that are vital to their function. However, as a result of the limitations in machining, we may be unable to meet some of these needs. We thus end up having to suggest alternate tech or alternate material.

For instance, sometimes clients request that we machine products as a one-piece. However, after simulating its feasibility, we may find that we have to use split machining. This is likely due to the many undercuts that cannot be built up by a 5 axis CNC machine.

Balance Cost and Optimize Benefit

Most experts in prototype creation strive to minimize their investment in time and money. We thus have to correct any design problems before making any further investments. This is why we find bridge builders creating stress models before constructing the actual bridge. Aeronautic experts also use wind tunnels to test and optimize their aircraft profiles. The question, however, remains how we can invest minimum time and effort on presentation prototypes. In most cases, we split the prototype creation process into several stages. By developing the prototype parts in different stages, we are more likely to avoid errors in the end.

The first step involves the creation of a prototype conceptual design. The design must include client needs for problem formulation. The second step involves configuring the design of prototype parts. After the first step, some prototype parts end up as standard components. This step involves choosing types like motor (AC, DC, Stepper) and spring (beam, helical, or leaf). We then proceed to the third step that involves coming up with the parametric design. This involves defining major dimensions and tolerance as well as specifying the needed material. Afterward, we go on to the fourth and final step that involves coming up with a detailed design. It entails supplying remaining tolerances, dimensions, and material info. If you have any further inquiries regarding presentation prototypes, simply contact us.

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Prototype in Design Thinking: Comprehensive Guide With Examples

Curious about Prototype in Design Thinking? A Prototype is a tangible representation used to test and validate ideas in the designing phase of product development. This blog will explore the role of prototyping in design thinking, offering practical examples and detailed insights into creating effective Prototypes.

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If you want to become a Product Designer, then one of the most important skills you can acquire is Design Thinking. As, Design Thinking is a human-centric methodology that places the needs of the users at the forefront of the design process. 

A Prototype in Design Thinking includes everything from creating simple wireframes to testing complete functional copies of the product. Thus, it is a key step in the Design Thinking process.  Explore our blog on Prototypes in Design Thinking to gain insights into its types, benefits, and how Prototype models function within an organisation. 

Table of Contents  

1) What is a Prototype?

2) Understanding Prototypes in Design Thinking

3) Types of Prototypes

4) How Prototyping Works in Design Thinking?

5) Benefits of Prototyping in Design Thinking

6) Five Stages of Prototyping in Design Thinking

7) Conclusion

What is a Prototype?

A Prototype is a basic, experimental model of a proposed solution that is used to quickly and cost-effectively test or validate ideas, design assumptions and other aspects of its conceptualisation. This allows the designers involved to make appropriate refinements or changes in direction if necessary.

Prototypes can take many forms and the only commonality among them is that they are tangible representations of your ideas. They don't necessarily have to be basic versions of a final product, but can take various forms. For instance, simple sketches or storyboards can be used to demonstrate an experiential solution, rough paper Prototypes of digital interfaces can be created, and even role-playing can be utilised to act out a service offering an idea. It's important to note that Prototypes don't need to be full products but can be used to test specific parts of a solution, such as a proposed grip handle of a wheelchair.  

Understanding Prototype in Design Thinking  

Now, what is a Prototype in Design Thinking? It is a product’s early sample, release or model created to test the concept or the process. Usually, System Analysts and users operate on Prototypes to improve the accuracy of a new design. 

The process of Prototyping is a very important phase in the Design Thinking procedure and is frequently used in the final testing step. Each product has its own target audience and is created to resolve its problem in every way. To check whether the product actually fixes the user's problem, Designers create an exemplary model or copy of the product, which is called a Prototype and test it according to the stakeholder's and users' perspectives. 

Hence, this Prototype enables Designers to test the workability of the current product design and potentially look into the perspective of trail users regarding the current product. It allows testing to be done properly, exploring concepts of the design. 

The aim of a Prototype in the Design Thinking procedure is to test or assess the product or product ideas before it is launched. Prototypes are copies or samples of final products used as testing tools. It is planned to test products and product ideas before infusing much time and resources into building a marketable product. 

Developing Prototypes lets the Designers create simple, minor Prototypes of the products and utilise them to monitor, record, and evaluate user performance levels or their general behaviour and responses to the current design. Designers can then make suitable improvements or possible modifications with the right approach.   

There are many forms of Prototypes, from simple sketches to rough paper Prototypes, that ratify service offerings. To create Prototypes, Designers do not need the complete product. In fact, they can take part of the product and create a Prototype to test only that particular part of the product. 

Get yourself registered in our Design Thinking Training    and get familiar with the Design Thinking process!  

Types of Prototypes   

The following are some common types of Prototypes: 

1) Sketches and Diagrams: Sketches and diagrams are the most basic type of Prototypes. It requires very little effort, and Designers do not need to have artistic drawing skills to achieve this purpose. Designers can use sketches to start the process of analysing and creating a new product and also share the concept with their colleagues to have more ideas and discussions. 

2) Paper Interface: Digital products such as mobile apps, websites, web services, and more need a variety of Prototyping methods for the end design and development. The paper interface is a proven, easy and early-stage Prototype for digital products. Designers can sketch paper interfaces or sketch and cut out the useful parts of User Interfaces (UI), like a text field or drop-down menu. 

3) Storyboards: Storyboarding is an incredible method of telling stories and directing targeted customers via a User Experience (UX). Storyboards let the Designers visualise how users would experience an issue or product and present it in a sequence of sketches or images. Stories help collect information about users, assignments, and objectives while simultaneously stimulating new ideas via collaboration with other designers.  

4) Role-playing: Role-playing Prototype allows Designers to examine situations within the system they are targeting physically. Role-playing can capture and enact the user's experience (UX) with the help of a product or service. Consider imitating their expertise to achieve an empathic understanding of users. Designers can create props using objects and audio replications to emulate the user environment.  

5) Physical Models:   A physical model conveys an intangible idea in a physical, three-dimensional form. This allows much better user testing and can stimulate discussions on the form factor of the suggested product. 

6) User-driven Prototypes: In these types of Prototypes, Designers don't test User Experience; instead, they let the user create some designs to understand their thinking process more. This user-driven Prototype adds value to the advantages of Design Thinking. Its main motive is not to utilise the user-generated ideas but to utilise their designs to match the final product with the user’s ideas. 

How Prototyping Works in Design Thinking?

Starting a project with a prototype can be beneficial in terms of setting your overall objectives and, more critically, identifying what is not functioning properly upfront. The following are three stages of the Prototype in Design Thinking that illustrate how the Prototype operates.

1) Action-oriented Bias: In order to truly test your assumptions, it is important to put them into practice rather than just thinking about them conceptually. An analytical study alone will not suffice. By conducting controlled tests in the actual environment, you can either validate or reject your assumptions, which can help you further develop your idea or even discard it altogether. It is in this way that you can gain a deeper understanding of the viability of your concept.

2) Finding out Through Doing: Design Thinking places significant importance on discovering new insights and exploring uncharted possibilities. As a result, the discipline focuses on education and team-building exercises that enhance learning potential. This enables your team to iterate quickly, refine test models and ultimately bring you closer to achieving your desired outcome.

3) Ingenious Serendipity: It is often assumed that cultivating a success mindset is as easy as flipping a switch. This belief is encouraged by the promotion of ground-breaking technologies, start-ups, and new ideas, all of which are designed to inspire and encourage creativity. Prototyping is a valuable tool that enables you and your team to observe and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of your ideas, learn from customer feedback, and identify small opportunities for creative exploration.

Benefits of Prototyping in Design Thinking

It's time to understand how you can enjoy the various benefits of Prototyping in Design Thinking. Here are some of the key benefits:

1) Assess Technical Feasibility: When you create a Prototype, it makes the idea of the concretisation process possible and smooth. Additionally, it also evaluates which feature is leading to difficulty in implementation. Hence, Prototyping in Design Thinking can assist in identifying unpredictable technical, physical, and financial restrictions.    

2) Improve Website Quality: A Prototype allows to improve the website quality. A well-designed and well-thought-out website assists in conducting the Design Thinking Process. It means Designers can conduct testing for site usability, inspect site navigation, determine correct placement and access information on the site. 

3) Effectively Show Ideas to the Customers: Efficiently thinking about the design of the Prototype makes it feasible to show your future product or product idea to potential consumers before its actual launch in the market. It also enables you to come up with better marketing strategies and begin the pre-sales.   

4) Lower Costs: A great idea can create various Prototypes before the launch of the actual product, and it can ultimately lead to cutting down the additional costs of unsold products. 

5) Planning: Through Prototyping, the design team gets important information that helps them plan the undertaking. A Prototype assists in building user stories and emphasising user needs. This fetches significant benefits to the scrum teams.   

6) Quick and Easy: Prototyping is a very quick and smooth procedure. A Designer can design a ready-to-use Prototype in no time ever with the help of simple ideas on paper if they understand the functionality and logic of the product.

Five stages of Prototyping in Design Thinking  

Prototyping refers to the process of developing a Prototype. The following are the five stages of Prototyping utilised in the Design Thinking process. Let’s understand each stage: 

Define the Vision    

In this stage of Prototyping, the Designer is required to put forward an extensive vision for the product. This stage involves asking a few key questions that must be answered, such as what the target market is, how many other options are available, what problem it resolves, and how much labour and material is required. Answering these key questions gives the Designer clarification on whether the Prototypes are even needed. 

Focus on key Features   

One of the most common mistakes Designers make is that they try to create a Prototype similar to the end product. Designers can use this idea when illustrating its value to the investors, but it is necessary in other requirements. The Designer should pick out one or two key product features to concentrate on in their Prototype.  

Produce    

The actual creation of the Prototype is the longest part, as the creator has to assess all the options involved. Some standard Prototyping methods to consider include the following:  

1) 3D printing:  This is a wonderful option when the Designer has a clear vision and wants to quickly test its effectiveness and operation.  

2) Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machining:  It’s a procedure that eradicates potential human mistakes. The product is automated and machine-controlled.  

3) Powder bed fusions:  This is a method particularly created for aluminium or metal materials with high melting points.  

4) Mould making and casting:  This process enhances flexibility and is suitable for creating custom designs and parts without the requirement for computer input.   

Test and Refine   

After creating the initial Prototype, the Designer now has to evaluate it, consider new options, and look for methods to improve the complete procedure. This procedure may include throwing out the initial design and restarting from step one. At any point, testing and refining should arise numerous times to make sure the Prototype is ready to be revealed to stakeholders.  

Present   

This is called the presentation stage, and it varies according to the objective of the Prototype. It may involve designing various models for testing among consumers, shipping the design in for patenting, or showing it to investors.  

Register for our  Design Thinking For R&D Engineers Training  and learn how Design Thinking is used as a management tool for R&D projects.  

What Prototype Fits the Project Best?

To determine the best Prototype for your project, consider the key questions it needs to answer, the time constraints, cost implications, and the depth of insights required. Start by listing core questions and assessing the project's timeline and budget. Low-fidelity Prototypes offer quick, cost-effective insights, while high-fidelity ones provide detailed feedback but require more resources.

Conduct a brainstorming session with your team to gather diverse perspectives and ensure all factors are considered. This approach will help select the most suitable Prototype, balancing efficiency and valuable insights.

Conclusion  

We hope that you found this blog insightful. In this blog, we have guided you through the whole concept of Prototyping, such as What is a Prototype in Design Thinking, the benefits of Prototyping and much more. The utilisation of Prototypes is paramount for Product Designers and design teams. 

Check out our Creative And Analytical Thinking Training now and gain an in-depth understanding of Analytical thinking in the Design Thinking process!  

Frequently Asked Questions

How Does Prototyping Facilitate Collaboration and Communication Among Design Teams and Stakeholders?

Prototyping helps identify and address potential issues early, reducing risks and uncertainties. By testing concepts and functionality before full-scale development, it ensures feasibility, improves design decisions, and prevents costly changes later in the Product Development Lifecycle.

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Prototyping methodologies and presentation techniques

In this post, we’ll take you through some of the best prototyping methods, including how to present a prototype to clients and stakeholders.

Have you ever asked yourself what exactly defines a web or mobile prototype ? Sometimes we get very concrete and inflexible ideas of what something is.

Start prototyping your ideas today. Enjoy unlimited projects!

However, when we look at the variety of prototyping methods out there, it’s clear to see that a prototype is really a representation of what a future product or feature will be. How you represent that idea doesn’t matter. What does matter is how well your representation communicates functionality.

In this post, we’ll explore some common and less common prototyping methodologies for UI/UX designers. We’ll also look at some great techniques for presenting prototypes to an audience, whether that be clients, stakeholders, design colleagues or even developers.

Creative prototyping methodologies

11 best prototype presentation techniques.

Every UX designer is familiar with digital prototypes. But were you aware of some of the less common prototyping methodologies on this list? See for yourself – some of the more abstract methods may even be worth trying out when it’s particularly challenging to think outside the box or when you have a particularly complex problem you’re trying to solve.

Paper prototypes

Paper prototyping is basically as it sounds – prototyping on paper. This method involves sketching a quick outline of your product and its different screens, UI layouts and elements. It’s a fast and cheap way to get ideas down on paper so that you can communicate them to your team and other stakeholders. For this reason, the paper prototyping methodology is also brilliant for brainstorming and ideation sessions.

Paper prototyping doesn’t require much detail, as designers normally do it in the very early stages of the design process. The drawings don’t have to be a work of art, but they should clearly communicate your design ideas, to the extent that you could even perform a bit of early usability testing. This is a great way to work out the information architecture of the design.

Low-fidelity prototypes

Low-fidelity prototypes are next on our list. Like the paper prototyping method, designing a low fidelity-prototype is an optional step but we at Justinmind highly recommend following it. Here’s why: a low-fidelity prototype is the crucial foundation that the majority of the product’s design will be built around.

The low-fidelity prototyping methodology consists of quickly designing a digital outline of your screen’s UI consisting of various elements on the screen along with basic content. It cuts out distraction by focusing on only the fundamental details, such as layout, spacing, element positioning, screen flow and information architecture. You can test low-fidelity prototypes on your users to check your product’s layouts and screen flows are intuitive.

After these basic details are validated, you can then push ahead with more advanced UI design and complex interactions.

High-fidelity prototypes

The high-fidelity prototype is the method you definitely don’t want to skip or skimp on before you hand off your design to the development team. Why? High-fidelity prototypes leave nothing to the imagination and absolutely nothing open to interpretation. This results in a cohesive and intuitive product, as the end result reflects all of the research and work the design team put into it.

The high-fidelity prototyping methodology means designing a pixel-perfect prototype with real images, graphics font and complex interactions. High-fidelity prototypes are brilliant for testing on your users as they represent how the final product will be. Once validated, it’s the last thing you’ll be handing off to your developers.

To get an idea of how a design evolves into a polished final design, check out this speedy tutorial on how to design a responsive website prototype. The whole thing takes only 10 minutes.

The beauty with this method is that your developers will get everything they need from the start – assets, images, color codes, fonts and they will also understand how to program the functionality and interactivity of the product.

Wizard of Oz prototypes

Sometimes you’re working with a shoe-string budget, or pushing against the last minute – sometimes both. Sometimes the types of interactions or functionalities may be too complex to test in a prototype because they would require backend development. When this happens you have options: one of those is the Wizard of Oz method.

Wizard of Oz prototyping refers to a scenario where you’re testing a prototype out on a user while a human computer sits on the other end providing the interaction. The idea is that the user isn’t aware there’s a human computer behind the interaction. The Wizard of Oz method gets its name from a scene in the film where Toto the dog draws back a curtain to reveal that the “wizard” is just a man pressing buttons and pulling levers.

This type of prototyping methodology is excellent for trying out features such as chat bot functionality or when you’re doing rapid prototyping. It allows you to improvise in terms of product interaction and explore a more diverse range of interactions that you otherwise wouldn’t have time to implement. It can also help you discover new workarounds, come up with new ideas or anticipate problems you didn’t see before.

User-driven prototypes

So what’s the deal here? Are we getting users to design our prototypes now while we just sit back and relax? No, definitely not. The user-driven prototyping methodology is merely an exercise where you sit down with a user and ask them to draw out how they expect a UI to look or a feature to work.

If this person represents your target user personas, it’s a great start in the ideation because you’re learning about their mental models and whether they understand metaphors like radio and pagination buttons.

With this prototyping method, you’re not getting them to design the product, instead, you’re analyzing their sketches to understand their thought processes.

Google Sheets prototypes

Ryu Saki is a designer who came up with a method for designing a low-fidelity prototype with Google Sheets . And by low fidelity, we mean really low fidelity, yet it has its practicalities! In his post, he walks us through how he created a Google Sheets prototype for a web portfolio.

He first began by creating a vision and user story, then went on to list out all the content, pages and menu items the site would have. He then created tabs for each page and included the relevant content on each page, linking each tab up to a Home tab with a highlighted menu. Pretty neat use of Google Sheets!

Creating a prototype like this is a brilliant way to bridge the gap between conception and prototyping because it helps you come up with the information architecture and to focus on the main screens required.

Now let’s look at how you could go about presenting your prototypes to your client or developers to get that all-important buy-in and move on to the next stage.

We’ll go over some of the most important techniques you can use for presenting your prototypes. You don’t have to use all of them because, just as each prototype is different, so too is each audience and presentation. Therefore, feel free to try out the ones you feel will help you most in your next prototype presentation.

1. Create all your slides in the prototype

Having different applications open during a prototype presentation can be a recipe for chaos and client sighs. Switching between different apps like PowerPoint and then to your prototyping tool can slow things down, confuse the client and make for a messy experience. You can even get confused, misplace files and spill the jar of water. You get it, no one wants to go there.

To avoid all this palava, we recommend you try and include all of your files in the same place – your prototyping tool – for a smooth and seamless presentation. Thankfully, with tools like Justinmind, this is really easy.

For example, in Justinmind, you can easily create a slideshow within your prototype using just one screen. To move on to the prototype, just switch screens. No need to hop back and forth between PowerPoint, Google Drive and god-knows-what!

2. Know your audience

The first and most obvious one and, we really can’t stress this enough, is to get to know your audience beforehand. Get to know what they’re expecting to see, as well as the limits of their knowledge.

For example, are you going to be presenting to a client, to developers or to your design team? Depending on the answer to that question, you’ll have to prepare your script and your presentation accordingly. This will help you be clear on what type of feedback you’re looking to obtain before a presentation begins.

3. Elicit the right kind of feedback

Planning to ask your audience the right questions is just as important a presentation technique as planning what you want to say to them.

For example, the client won’t be able to give you certain technical specifications because they may not have the answer, whereas the developers won’t know if something is on-brand or not or whether something is the real goal or not. Establish what kind of feedback you’re aiming to get from your audience.

This means preparing the questions beforehand. If you’ll be presenting your prototype to a client, you might ask the following:

• Is this the type of experience you wanted for the user?
• Is this how you expected that feature might work?
• Do you feel this interaction encapsulates the brand’s personality?

For a developer, it might be something more like “do you think it’s technically feasible to have this feature work across one screen only?”

4. Set expectations beforehand

This prototype presentation technique is not so much about expectations management as much as it is simply informing the audience what you’re going to be present. Trust us when we say this is important to avoid confusion and misunderstandings!

Have a disclaimer screen before you display your prototype that explains briefly what a prototype is and that it doesn’t reflect how the final product may or may not turn out. This is especially important with low-fidelity prototypes to avoid that face-palming moment of “why is it all black, white and grey and the text in latin?”

Setting expectations is also important because you need to ensure everyone, including yourself, is focused on the real goals of the prototype and not simply getting bogged down in the mere aesthetics. Yes, the aesthetics are important, but what are the main functionalities you’re trying to design for your target users? Do they work as expected? Will they have the impact on the user that the client wants?

For best results, notify your audience with as much advance as possible so they have time to think about and prepare for what they’re going to see provide feedback on.

5. Hand out user flow maps to those present

Bringing your user flow maps to your prototype presentation can be quite a handy technique. Printing out copies for everyone there is even better!

User flow maps make a great bit of supporting documentation to go with your presentation as they act as a practical guide for the client. At a glance they’ll be able to glean the context behind each screen and understand where you are in the prototype. No more “what were the steps before this screen again?” or “could you go back again, please?”

6. Make your prototype presentation easy to navigate

When you present your prototype to your client or to your developer, you may want them to interact with it, or you may want them to take it away and try it out themselves later to review it further.

Therefore, try to include descriptive buttons throughout your prototype presentation that enables anyone else who hasn’t created it to understand and navigate through it. Even if it’s just to make the experience easier for yourself during the meeting, it’s worth thinking carefully about how the slides and screens can be navigated.

An example might be a simple “open prototype” or “close prototype” button and having one base screen or start screen that the user can navigate back to from anywhere in the prototype presentation. This also prevents the relentless percussion of hammering the back and forward buttons.

Lastly, for ease of reference, consider keeping all of the documentation, whether that be functional specifications, user stories or annotations all in the same prototype link.

7. Share your storyboard prior to the presentation

This one, of course, only applies if you created a storyboard leading up to your design. Sometimes storyboards are necessary for designs, depending on how difficult the ideation phase is. However, if you did storyboard your design or feature before your started, why not bring it to your presentation as a simple handout?

The client will be able to see the comic-strip formula of your user interacting with the product in their daily lives. Therefore, when you demonstrate the various screens of the prototype and the user flow, the storyboard will put everything into even greater context. It will also add a certain storytelling quality to the presentation, something that always boosts engagement. And after all, an engaged client is much more likely to provide actionable and helpful feedback.

8. Ensure everyone has access on their devices

Another practical tip – and this one might seem like a no-brainer – checking that everyone will be able to access the prototype on their mobiles, laptops, or even tablets beforehand. If it’s a mobile app, the client should be able to access it on their mobile device, so they can navigate through the prototype themselves and have a realistic experience. This can help them understand your design even more.

Prototyping tools like Justinmind are perfect for this because simulating your prototype is easy. All you have to do is share it via a link in a browser, or download the Justinmind application to simulate it on a smartphone or tablet.

9. Carry out user research

This one goes without saying, but you should definitely have all of your design work backed up by data and real facts and figures. If your product’s still in the early stages of the design process, make sure your low-fidelity prototype design decisions have been backed up by some user research.

You can even do this by simply using a survey platform like Typeform, Google Forms or SuveyMonkey to ask questions to your potential users. Or in the case of a more fleshed-out design, you may have already carried out some usability testing that proves that the design works for the users.

It’s always helpful to back your design decisions up to show that it is not subjective designer art. It also helps the client to stay objective and is more likely to elicit buy-in. You also have the added likelihood of the product being a success if you’re on the same page as the user.

10. Add transitions between screens

While not always a requirement, adding in transitions between the slides of your prototype presentation helps avoid disorienting your audience and to make the presentation run much more smoothly. You might even think about adding in transitions within your prototype in between the various screens, especially if it’s a low-fidelity prototype – even if it’s just a blank white page.

11. Use the KISS principle where applicable

The KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid) is important when it comes to presenting your prototype. Long, waffling speeches will put your audience to sleep, as will dull, content-heavy graphs for user data.

The arrangement of your content and layout is just as important as what you’re going to say in your prototype presentation. Think about using fun and engaging infographics to represent things like user testing data or research and getting straight to the point about core features in your prototype.

Afterall, they say that a picture is worth a thousand words. We say a prototype is worth a thousand more! Make it count and engage your audience throughout your presentation.

Key takeaways

There are many creative methods for prototyping and you don’t have to use them all. There are no rules set in stone in the design world so much as there are guidelines. You’re free to use whichever one you like to get the creative juices flowing.

However, the prototyping methodologies you do choose will depend a lot on your team, the clients you work for, as well as other factors, such as the budget, deadline and the technical requirements. Nonetheless, we always recommend creating at least a low-fidelity and a high-fidelity prototype before developing your product.

In addition to the myriad of prototyping methodologies available to the modern UI/UX designer, there also exist many tried and tested techniques to present them. Again, the techniques you choose to present your prototype will depend on everything from the stage of the design process you’re in to the client you’re dealing with.

Life is all about choice and trade-offs, but we hope this post has given you some useful ideas for how to move forward with your design projects.

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A Complete Introduction to Prototyping (2024 Guide)

If you’ve been following our series of design thinking articles, you’ll know that there are five key steps in this process.

So far, we’ve covered the empathize stage and the methods you can use to get to know your target audience; the define stage, looking at how to craft a meaningful problem statement; and the ideate stage, exploring various techniques for generating new ideas.

Now it’s time to explore the fourth and penultimate stage: prototyping.

Here’s why the prototyping stage is so important: Prototyping allows you to determine whether or not the design (or changes) work the way you intended them to—before they’re out in the world and in the hands of your users.

Before releasing a product to market, you want to make sure that it works as intended. Does it solve the user’s problem exactly as planned? Is it user-friendly and intuitive? Ideally, you’ll find these things out before you spend time and money developing the final product.

In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about prototyping, starting with a quick recap of the design thinking process . Here’s an overview of what we’ll cover:

• What is design thinking? A brief recap
• What is a prototype?
• Why create prototypes?
• Different kinds of prototype
• Prototyping best practices

Ready? Let’s jump in.

1. What is design thinking? A brief recap

Design thinking is both an ideology and a process used to solve complex problems in a user-centric way. Just like user experience (UX) design , it places the user front and center, focusing heavily on empathy.

What’s special about design thinking is that it advocates a solution-based approach to problem-solving. Rather than fixating on obstacles and limitations, it encourages you to experiment, iterate, and think outside the box.

As you may already know, the design thinking process can be divided into five phases: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. While you might look at these steps and see a very logical sequence, it’s important to bear in mind that the design thinking process is not linear. Each step brings new discoveries to light, so don’t be surprised if you need to loop back to a previous step and redefine what you’ve done in order to move forward.

Prototyping is the fourth stage in the design thinking process. Your prototypes will be based on everything you’ve done so far: interviewing your users, defining your problem statement, and coming up with potential solutions. But what is a prototype? We’re glad you asked…

2. What is a prototype?

*Put simply, a prototype is a scaled-down version of your product; a simulation or sample version which enables you to test your ideas and designs *before investing time and money into actually developing the product. **

So, if you’re designing an app, you might create a digital prototype and test it on real users before handing it off to the developers .

Prototypes come in all different shapes and sizes, ranging from simple paper models to fully functional, interactive digital prototypes. We’ll look at some of the different types of prototype in section four. First, though, it’s important to understand the value of prototyping—which brings us to section three.

3. Why use prototypes?

Prototyping is an extremely valuable step in the design thinking process. Putting the user at the heart of the process requires you to test your designs on real users—and prototypes make this possible without spending loads of time and money.

Prototypes can help you to:

• Gain first-hand insights into how your users will interact with, and react to, the product you’re designing. Seeing an early version of the product in action shows you if, and how, it’ll work in the real world.
• Identify any usability issues or design flaws before it’s too late. If an idea or design is destined for failure, you’d rather find out in the early stages. Prototypes enable you to fail early and cheaply; they’ll expose a weak or unsuitable approach before you’ve invested too much time or money.
• Make informed design decisions. Can’t decide where a certain button should go on your app home screen? Torn between two different layouts for your website? Test a few versions in the form of prototypes and see which works best.

No matter how thorough your UX research is, many people find it difficult to truly conceptualize a product until they have it in front of them. Prototypes allow you to iterate, refine, rework, and make improvements until you have a market-ready product.

4. Different kinds of prototypes

Now let’s take a look at some of the different kinds of prototypes you might use. Prototypes can vary in terms of their form, fidelity, interactivity, and lifecycle:

• Form: Is it a hand-drawn prototype, or a digital one? Is it for mobile or desktop?
• Fidelity: How detailed and polished is the prototype? You’ll often hear the terms high-fidelity and low-fidelity in relation to prototypes.
• Interactivity: How functional is the prototype? Can the user click on it or interact with it, or is it view-only?
• Lifecycle: Is the prototype a quick, disposable version that will be replaced with a new and improved version? Or is it a more enduring creation that can be built and improved upon, potentially ending up as the final product?

Generally, prototypes can be divided into low-fidelity and high-fidelity. Fidelity simply describes how similar to the final product the prototype is; whether it’s an accurate representation of the final product, or more of a basic, early-stage model. Here’s an example of how a prototype for one screen would look from low to high fideltity:

So how do you know whether to use a low, mid, or high-fidelity prototype? It all depends on what you want to achieve with your prototype, as well as how complete your design is.

Low- to mid-fidelity prototypes

Low-fidelity prototypes are ideal if you want to rapidly test broad concepts. They’re quick, cheap, and highly collaborative; they don’t require advanced design skills, so different people from different teams can easily be involved.

As a rule, low-fidelity prototypes keep content and visuals to a minimum, presenting only the key elements as basic shapes in order to convey visual hierarchy . Their simplicity can lead to uncertainty during testing; it’s not always easy for users to identify what and how the prototype is supposed to work.

Low-fi prototypes are also limited in terms of interactivity, so it’s not possible to convey animations or transitions.

Mid-fidelity prototypes  can also be inexpensive to create (depending on the tools you choose), and don’t require much design knowledge or experience. These are great if you want to test broad functional features, such as the user flow for one particular use case (i.e., the user taps this button, which leads them here, then here then here). This is a great approach to take if you’re short on time and/or just need to get an overview across screens to be sure that the solutions youve designed actually work and don’t overlook any key considerations.

Some of the most common low- and mid-fidelity prototyping techniques include paper prototyping and clickable wireframes. These methods are particularly useful for iterating on initial design ideas, and getting the designers and stakeholders aligned on basic design elements. Let’s explore each of these techniques in more detail.

Paper prototyping

Believe it or not, you can create prototypes using nothing more than pen and paper. Paper prototypes are usually low-fidelity. You simply draw different screens of a digital product interface onto sheets of paper—no fancy software needed. You can even simulate interactivity during testing by moving the screens (or sheets of paper) around based on how the user navigates the paper prototype. Check out how  Google does paper prototyping .

Paper prototyping does have its advantages—it’s quick and affordable, and can be used to document the evolution of your design, giving you tangible artefacts to refer back to. However, paper prototypes can be limited; you won’t be able to convey visually complex interfaces, nor high levels of interactivity. They are best kept to the very early stages of the design process when you need to quickly explore a variety of broader ideas or concepts.

Clickable wireframes

Clickable wireframes can also be used as low-fidelity prototypes. A clickable wireframe not only represents the visual layout of a digital interface, but also offers a certain degree of interactivity. You can simulate the journey a user might go through by including hyperlinked buttons which lead to another wireframe.

Clickable wireframes are still very much a bare-bones representation of the finished product, including things like image and text placeholders together with buttons and navigational elements. They can be created using special wireframing software, or even with a presentation tool like PowerPoint or Keynote.

The great thing about clickable wireframes is that they can be quickly and easily modified. Unlike a paper prototype where you’ll need to redraw the entire screen if you want to make changes, you can make minor edits without starting from scratch. Still, low-fidelity wireframes are best suited for prototyping in the early stages of the project.

High-fidelity prototypes

Then there are high-fidelity prototypes: the more detailed, realistic prototypes that look and operate much like the final product. You’ll move onto hi-fi prototypes once you have a good idea of what you’re going to build. They’ll help you to fine-tune the design and get it ready for market.

Here’s a comparison of a mid- and high-fidelity prototype from Jamal Nichols :

High-fidelity prototypes tend to include all the visual components, interactive elements, and content that will be featured on the final product. In fact, they look just like a real app or website—which is hugely beneficial when it comes to user testing. The user feels like they’re interacting with a live product, so you can expect them to behave naturally and provide meaningful feedback.

Of course, high-fidelity prototypes are more expensive and time-consuming to produce than their low-fidelity equivalents. However, they are the most useful option when it comes to testing your designs. With a high-fidelity prototype, you can test pretty much every single element of your product before sending it off for development. Not only that: hi-fi prototypes enable you to show your colleagues and stakeholders from other departments exactly how the final product should look.

When it comes to high-fidelity prototypes, you’ll most likely create digital prototypes using specialist software. Some of the most popular prototyping tools on the market include Sketch, InVision, and Flinto. You can find a comprehensive list of prototyping tools here .

5. How to create a prototype: Tips and best practices

Now we know exactly what prototyping is, why it’s so valuable, and what kinds of prototypes we might use throughout the design process. There’s only one thing left to do: create your own!

Here are some pointers that will help you along the way:

Choose the right kind of prototype

Before you create a prototype, consider what stage you’re at in the design process, as well as the time and resources available. Low-fidelity prototypes make sense in the early stages, but you’ll want to move on to hi-fi prototypes as you get closer to shipping your product.

Set concrete goals

Have a clear idea of what you want your prototype to achieve. In other words, what do you want to find out when you test your prototype? Remember to focus on user needs, keeping your problem statement in mind at all times!

Use the right tools

If you’re new to digital prototyping, spend some time playing around with a few of the most popular industry tools. Find the tool that meets your needs in terms of features and functionality, and familiarize yourself with the interface before you start prototyping. When the time comes, this will make the prototyping process much easier!

Take action!

Design Thinking is all about generating ideas and testing them, so prototype as and when you need to. Remember, the Design Thinking process isn’t strictly linear, so you can whip up a prototype at any time.

6. What next?

Prototyping and testing go hand in hand, so once you’ve created a prototype, you’ll need to put it in front of real users. You’ll observe how they interact with the product in its current state, and ask for feedback on how the experience feels. You can learn more about how to test your prototypes in this guide . Through continuous prototyping, you’ll make informed design decisions—iterating your way to an intuitive, user-friendly product that your users will love.

If you’d like to learn more about prototyping in UX design, check out these articles:

• What is rapid prototyping?
• The best prototyping tools for UX designers
• What’s the difference between a wireframe, a prototype, and a mockup?

• Prototype Designers
• UX Designers
• UI Designers
• Product Designers
• Web Designers
• Mobile App Designers
• SaaS Designers
• Figma Designers

Perfect Your UX Design Process: A Guide to Prototype Design

Prototype design is a powerful process detailing how designers do everything required to test, iterate, and develop prototypes, beginning with user flows and ending in functional wireframes.

By Judit Casacuberta

Judit is a UX Designer and researcher with a master’s degree in Human Computer Interaction.

The process of prototyping—from creating simple wireframes to testing fully functional mockups—is one of the most potent and powerful set of skills any designer can master. It’s also fraught with peril in workplaces where the process is skipped in lieu of just “designing a prototype” as a simple deliverable to give to the next department to build. No matter how diligent your business is with design prototyping, the actual process can often make or break your final product.

How and why to actually build a prototype is often a mystery. Ask many designers and they’ll tilt their heads like confused puppies. “What do you mean? You just do it,” they’ll say. And true enough: We all know how to create a prototype. We just don’t know how we know.

This is especially critical considering how prototypes are often the most valuable deliverable. Clients and managers want to see what you did, whether it’s a website or a physical product. They want to try it out, inspect the various elements, and understand the workflow. They want to see “how it works.”

Building a prototype is not enough; we have to understand the process involved with constructing a product’s initial drafts. This article will go in depth on everything a designer needs to know, and do, to accomplish that.

Prototype Design - What Prototypes Are for

Human beings are highly visual. In fact, 30 percent of our cerebral cortex is devoted purely to vision . So when you see a prototype, the most important thing about it is that you see it! When the client can view it, and understand all of the processes involved with the product, especially areas of contention for future testing, that prototype comes to life.

So what is a prototype? A prototype is a tool for visualizing a smorgasbord of interactive design work; in effect, prototypes (at almost any stage) are an amalgamation of all the work that came before into a single, visible, functional piece. This visual representation demonstrates what the product is doing at any given point, what the interactive elements are, and how the product would function in the real world.

While there are plenty of mechanisms for the various aspects of prototype design (like creating sketches ), it’s easy to miss things and make mistakes.

This makes the work for how a prototype is built tremendously valuable, since in many ways it describes how the purpose of the product is actualized. Not perfectly, and definitely not accurately most of the time, but as the name implies , prototypes aren’t final.

They slow us down to speed us up. By taking the time to design a prototype for our ideas, we avoid costly mistakes such as becoming too complex too early and sticking with a weak idea for too long. Tim Brown, CEO and president of IDEO

A simple way to think of prototypes is as a mechanism to demonstrate functionality.

That practical explanation of how something works has a number of high-value benefits, including:

• Making it real – Before any prototypes are built, the product is completely conceptual! That’s fine for a little while, but eventually it must become something that stakeholders and users eventually understand and appreciate. A prototype is the first step in moving from conceptual to actual.
• Work a problem – Sometimes, we have a design challenge without a solution. As a skill, UX prototyping is a great way to visualize the problem and introduce solutions quickly. If it doesn’t work, throw out the prototype and try again.
• Iterate – Prototyping comes in stages, but the result is the same: to evolve your ideas. From sketches to hi-fis, each new iteration offers a plethora of behaviors and functions to test. And with more data, we can iterate both faster and smarter.
• Detect unintended scenarios – Once something is visible, we have the limitations of our product available for study, which also provides better context on what should be there…and what shouldn’t!
• Detect usability problems – This is where many designers live: Once a product has a prototype of any kind, usability challenges suddenly become easy to spot and fix.
• Presentation – Prototypes at any stage are a standard for presentation. Whether you’re testing a version of a page or presenting a product to a client, a prototype in some form should be there. And if it isn’t, you can bet that someone will ask where it is and why it wasn’t included.

How to Start the Prototype UX Process

After receiving a 50-page requirements document from a client, looking at a blank canvas can be daunting. Reviewing unorganized thoughts from client meetings, napkin sketches, and dirty whiteboard photos rarely help.

Because prototypes are built on so much other information, it’s important to gather the necessary details in advance to putting pen to paper. Consider the following checklist and review the details provided by your client or manager:

1. What are the goals of the project?

Start with the big picture. Does the product solve a real need? How does it solve that need? Understanding the product’s utility is critical to delivering any sort of viable solution.

2. What competitive products do people currently use?

A strong competitive analysis will provide a clear picture of the state of the marketplace for the product type, plus what today’s users expect.

3. Who is the audience? What are their goals?

Understanding demographics and user needs provides the context necessary to create products geared toward providing for those particular user types and fulfilling their needs.

4. What type of product is it, and what (device) is it for?

With so many different technologies and solutions, UX designers need to know how the product will be used (web app, responsive website, mobile app, etc.), on what device(s), and how different versions will coexist (if at all).

5. Are there any visual precedents to follow?

If the product already exists and the project is for improvements or a redesign, it’s possible that some requirements exist in consideration of current user behavior with the product.

6. What are the deliverables?

Setting expectations about deliverables and the process is critical for your planning and workflow. Every project is different, but if the deliverables are well defined, the rest of the UX design process has a higher chance of going smoothly.

Draw Your Prototypes

With our data available and organized, the next step is to start drawing. Many designers will already have an idea for the layout, structure, or even where specific elements of the visual design belong before ever drawing it out. That’s fine, but the purpose of initial sketches is to explore the available space to highlight what’s possible—and, more importantly, what isn’t.

Gather your writing instruments of choice, be it pencil and paper or whiteboard and marker. The sketching process is akin to a writer freewriting, or a musician strumming; draw what you feel based on all the work you’ve done in advance, and considering the pieces below:

01 | User Flows – Follow identifying user flows. See how the users meet their goals and how they interact within the system.

02 | Information entities – Each user flow will show some user inputs and outputs. Identify what they are, how they relate to the user behavior and expectations, what interactions they are involved with, and how they work.

03 | First sketches – After getting an idea of who will use the system, what they are going to do, and with what, it’s time to see how. Sketch your user flows—no need to create the layout yet, just get the functionality resolved.

04 | Sketch a rudimentary structure – After your user flows are sketched, you will have a better idea of the best layout for the product. This will include content (text, photos, video, etc.) that’ll show up as basic boxes or scribbles. When written by hand, they won’t fit to size, so all structure and content is just for visualization, not for actual use.

One additional tip is to use sketch pads , specially formulated paper, or tools to make clearer wireframes while sketching. They provide the basic layout for the viewport in question, are fairly low-cost, and with the proper stencil also make sketches come up more cleanly. These are tremendously helpful if you’re a messy drawer since they provide the correct aspect ratios and gridlines for smartphones and web browsers.

This process can continue for as long as you want, but it’s time to move to the next step once a user flow is completed and the process of completing that flow is clear. It’s a good idea to bounce back and forth between sketching and building digital wireframes, mainly to keep the process creative. As you progress through more flows, the product will feel more concrete, and you’ll naturally shift away from sketching.

Moving to Digital (Low- to High-fidelity Prototypes)

Once there are enough complete sketches to move forward, it’s time to digitize them. Whether it’s Adobe XD or Sketch , Framer , or Flinto, or something else entirely, creating digital versions of sketches is the first step to formalizing them. The focus therefore shifts from creatively adding necessary elements to organizing assets and structure within the designs.

As the prototypes become more practical and the elements more structured, the product takes shape. When moving to digital prototypes, the fidelity is determined by the level of interactivity , visual design , and content . A prototype can be low or high fidelity individually on these areas, though hi-fis incorporate all three at the highest level.

Consider hierarchy in regards to reaching user needs. Each sketch connects to a user flow and story, and the sketches are a first step toward determining the layout and structure of a product. Today’s digital tools can speed much of this up—for example, setting master elements that apply to all pages and templates for page types.

With each new wire and iteration, ask two major questions: Does this page account for its purpose in the larger user flow? And does the interaction make sense (meaning did the user understand how to complete the action)? We ask these questions a lot. The more we do, the more likely each new iteration is to bring the prototypes closer to a final draft.

Digital prototypes are also far easier to test since they’re not only more legible but also faster to reproduce and iterate en masse. This is where UX prototyping tools like InVision and Proto.io come in very handy to create clickable prototypes. When it’s clickable, it becomes easy to test the usability of various aspects, from individual buttons to entire flows.

Clickable prototyping has become especially popular over the past few years thanks to the ease of use of programs like InVision. It is even more valuable for mobile devices, where now every major prototyping tool provides some avenue to see or test mobile wires directly on a test device.

With some engineering knowhow or more powerful tools like Justinmind or Axure , it’s also possible to build functional prototypes, which are interactive beyond simply clicking. Users can test things like filling out forms, accomplishing simple or complex tasks, and actually using the application as it’s meant to be used, all without actually building it. Designers with training in human computer interaction (HCI) design, including many Toptal designers , regularly build and test with functional prototypes.

Interactive prototypes are great for testing animations, user operations inside the app, and higher-level functions that sometimes can’t be tested without a functional action.

Prototype with Purpose

The beauty—and challenge—of prototyping is in the process. We can say the same about almost everything, but prototypes start and finish with purpose. Without knowing why a particular screen needs to behave a certain way, how a feature should operate, or whether users need a funnel or not, the prototype made isn’t developed; it’s drawn and then created ad hoc.

Yet even if every single wireframe built is done so intelligently, questions asked along the way, with every related user story taken into consideration and the information architecture used as a map, it’s still possible to miss things. That’s the challenge of prototype UX design: Clients, managers, and even designers forget that prototypes aren’t final . They’re just a draft, an iteration until the next version. It’s all part of the UX design process.

So when constructing your next set of prototypes, remember to ask at least one all-important question: Does this produce the desired result? If not, then it’s another opportunity to draft a new version.

Further Reading on the Toptal Blog:

• E-commerce UX: An Overview of Best Practices (with Infographic)
• Empty States: The Most Overlooked Aspect of UX
• Heuristic Principles for Mobile Interfaces
• The Importance of Human-centered Design in Product Design
• Anticipatory Design: How to Create Magical User Experiences

Understanding the basics

How do you make a prototype.

Prototypes are made by creating wireframes for each screen as determined by individual user flows, device and technical requirements, and an understanding of today’s design standards. Prototypes must be understandable to users, testable, and changeable.

What is a clickable prototype?

A clickable prototype is a digital prototype built with the intention of allowing users to click through it to view the interactions and connection points for each page, button, and behavior.

What is a working prototype?

A working prototype, sometimes called a functional prototype, is similar to a clickable prototype except that, instead of supporting clicks and taps, the prototype supports full functionality, such as inputting data and more powerful interactions (e.g., drag and drop).

• Prototyping
• Product Design

Judit Casacuberta

Member since July 25, 2017

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What is a prototype?

What is a prototype? Understanding the heart of product design

When it comes to creating a new product, there's a lot more to it than just brainstorming and sketching. Enter the world of prototypes, a critical step in bringing a product to life. Prototypes are more than just models; they're the tangible manifestations of an idea. They allow you to test concepts, identify problems, and refine the product before it goes into full production.

Prototypes: More than just mockups

At its core, a prototype is a working model of a product. It's not a final version but rather an evolving version designed to help you understand how the product will work in the real world. Think of it as a tool to communicate your vision to others—whether that's stakeholders, developers, or other designers.

Prototypes come in all shapes and sizes. Some are basic, low-fidelity models made of paper or foam, while others are high-fidelity digital versions with interactive elements. The type of prototype you use depends on your goals and the stage of development you're in. Early on, you might use simple sketches or wireframes. As you get closer to production, your prototypes might include detailed graphics, user interfaces, and functional components.

The role of prototypes in Design Thinking

Prototypes play a crucial role in design thinking, emphasizing empathy, creativity, and iteration to solve complex problems. In design thinking, prototyping is used to explore and validate ideas in a tangible way. It allows teams to quickly test concepts, learn from feedback, and iterate based on real-world insights.

The beauty of prototyping in design thinking is its flexibility. You can start with low-fidelity prototypes to explore a wide range of ideas and then gradually increase the fidelity as you refine the concept. This iterative process helps design teams stay open to new ideas and pivot when necessary, leading to more innovative and user-centric solutions.

Prototyping also fosters collaboration within design thinking. Since prototypes are visual and interactive, they facilitate communication among cross-functional teams. This shared understanding helps align everyone toward a common goal, reducing miscommunication and ensuring a smoother development process.

The role of prototypes in product development

In product development, prototypes serve as a bridge between the initial idea and the final product. Before committing to full-scale production, they are essential for testing feasibility, usability, and functionality. Product teams can identify design flaws, technical issues, and user experience problems early on by creating prototypes, saving time and resources.

Prototypes in product development also serve as a tool for stakeholder engagement. They allow you to present your concept in a way that is easy to understand, increasing buy-in from decision-makers. This is especially important when seeking funding or approval for further development.

Additionally, prototypes are crucial for user testing in product development. They provide a realistic environment for gathering feedback from real users, allowing you to understand their needs and preferences. This feedback loop is invaluable for refining the product and meeting customer expectations.

The different types of prototypes and when to use them

Prototypes can be divided into several categories based on their fidelity and purpose. Understanding these types and knowing when to use each can help you choose the right approach for your project.

Low-Fidelity Prototypes : These are simple, often hand-drawn models focusing on basic structure and layout. They're great for early-stage brainstorming , concept validation, and quick iteration. Use them when you need to explore a wide range of ideas without investing too much time or resources.

High-Fidelity Prototypes : These are more detailed and closely resemble the final product. They often include interactive elements, detailed graphics, and realistic user interfaces. Use them when you need to simulate the user experience, test functionality, or present to stakeholders.

Functional Prototypes : These prototypes focus on the working aspects of the product. They're used to test functionality and identify technical issues. Use them when you need to ensure the product works as intended and is technically feasible.

Interactive Prototypes : These are digital models that allow users to interact with the product, simulating the user experience. They're valuable for usability testing and gathering feedback. Use them when you want to understand how users interact with your product and identify areas for improvement.

Prototyping in action: The process

The prototyping process typically involves several stages, each with its own objectives and outcomes. Here's a high-level overview:

Concept Development : This is where you brainstorm ideas and create low-fidelity prototypes to explore different concepts. The goal is to identify a direction for your product.

Design and Development : Once you've settled on a concept, you start creating more detailed prototypes. This stage involves refining the design, adding interactive elements, and testing functionality.

User Testing : At this stage, you gather feedback from real users. This is where interactive prototypes shine. You can observe how users interact with the product and identify areas for improvement.

Iteration and Refinement : Based on user feedback, you make adjustments to the prototype. This stage is iterative, meaning you might go through several rounds of testing and refinement before finalizing the design.

Miro: The go-to tool for prototyping and product development

When it comes to prototyping, having the right tools can make all the difference. Miro is a versatile platform designed to streamline the prototyping process and enhance collaboration. With Miro, you can create low-fidelity sketches, high-fidelity wireframes , and interactive prototypes—all in one place.

Miro's intuitive interface allows you to collaborate with team members in real-time, making it easy to share ideas and gather feedback. The platform's extensive library of templates and design tools simplifies the prototyping process, enabling you to bring your product vision to life with ease.

If you are working on a new app, a physical product, or a website, Miro provides all the necessary features to create prototypes that resonate with your team and stakeholders. With its flexibility and collaborative capabilities, Miro is the perfect tool for product development, giving you confidence to move from concept to reality.

Discover more

How to make a prototype?

What is rapid prototyping?

Low fidelity vs. high fidelity prototypes

Wireframe vs. prototype

Mockup vs. prototype

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Inside Design

The importance of guidance when presenting prototypes

Clark wimberly,   •   dec 22, 2015.

W e eat with our eyes. The sight of a juicy double-bacon cheeseburger or a cinnamon roll dripping with icing can make you want to stop everything and take a bite.

Same goes for design.

Which of these burgers would you rather eat?

Marketing your prototypes.

When presenting a prototype, especially to a varied crowd, you’ve got to properly set the scene.

The end user might stumble onto your product with little warning, but your stakeholders shouldn’t have that experience.

• Give a proper introduction. Summarize problems the project’s attempting to solve, solutions being considered, and goals or outcomes expected.
• Give your explanations context. Stash notes right inside your prototype so the team knows exactly what you had in mind.
• Discuss failures and future iterations. However you document, include some history. Knowing the how and why of a design choice makes it easier to swallow.

“Stash notes inside your prototype so the team knows exactly what you had in mind.”

The right tool(s) for the job

From working prototypes to slide decks, here are a few ways to put your project’s best foot forward.

Prezi As evidenced by the rise (or re-re-rise) of the GIF , people love animation. Prezi is an online service that creates dazzling presentations (for those who eat with their eyes).

Google Slides While Slides might not be the most robust tool on the block, its ubiquity is dang impressive. It runs in the cloud—and virtually everyone has a Google account.

Keynote/PowerPoint These desktop dinosaurs are no slouch when it comes to whipping up an awesome presentation. Just make sure you upload your results online somewhere (like Speakerdeck ).

InVision More than just prototyping, InVision packs a whopping collaborative toolset. Tours are a great way to add guided, in-context explanations to your designs.

Better yet, each guided step of the tour can hold a threaded conversation, perfect for pinpoint discussion of sticky issues.

Share your progress with the team

By clark wimberly.

Clark is a UX designer in Austin, TX. Equal parts freelance, startup, and agency, he’s been rebuilt into a content producer with a designer-friendly interface.

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Prototyping, Explained: Why and How to Build a Sample Version of a Product

• 11 min read
• Published: 25 Nov, 2022
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Prototyping explained

What is a prototype and why do you need one?

In software development, a prototype is an early design of the product with which users can interact. Prototypes are not coded but visualized using specific tools to click between screens and mimic the final user experience. Prototyping allows you to save time and money on development as you can uncover usability problems early on and polish the design before building the product.

Designing a prototype Source: Moqups

Why would you need a prototype? For ideation . A prototype is an easy way to experiment and express different ideas within the design team. For engaging stakeholders . As Skyscanner’s Gareth Williams says , “If you can show someone what you want to do and want them to help you do that, that is so much more powerful than trying to write to someone or explain to someone.” For communicating between design and engineering teams . A prototype reduces the uncertainty that devs may feel when being introduced to the design. For identifying usability issues . A clickable prototype allows designers to observe end users' interactions before a single line of code has been written. For users, prototypes look and feel like the final product so their reactions will be natural and as close to real-life scenarios as possible. There’s a lot of confusion about what is and what isn’t a prototype, with such concepts as mockups, wireframes, and proof of concept also being used for similar purposes. Let’s address the differences between them.

Proof of Concept vs Prototype vs MVP

A proof of concept (PoC) is the cheapest and simplest representation of your product you can create. Its main purpose is to find out if the product idea is technically feasible . It can be a presentation, a video, or a diagram, an early implementation of functionality, basically, something to show decision makers that this can and should be done, often with the scope and technologies required for the project. A minimum viable product (MVP) is a big step from a PoC since it’s an early product version with some bare minimum features that’s used to see how the audience will accept the product. They’re often released to the public to gather feedback and test. A prototype sits somewhere in between – it’s much more detailed and practical than a PoC but it’s focused only on design and doesn’t actually have any features unlike an MVP.

Wireframe vs mockup vs prototype

Basically, wireframes and mockups are different versions of a prototype.

Wireframes are outlines of the design, showcasing the location of content, buttons, text, etc. They can be hand drawn or created using special tools. A wireframe represents the basic skeleton of UI without getting into details but allowing designers to quickly edit the elements and their positions. They are the first step in the design process after gathering information and are usually created by the UX team. Mockups are updated wireframes filled with content: logos, images, and real text. Created by UI designers, they already have colors, names, and fonts that might end up in the final product. Finally, the final form a prototype may take is a functional (or working) prototype . It’s a clickable version of a mockup that can closely simulate the real user experience. It can take different forms as well:

• Feasibility prototype, where you test what technology would work best for your product idea to catch risks.
• High-fidelity (hi-fi) prototype that’s meant to collect user performance data (satisfaction level, number of issues per session, etc.)
• Live-data prototype where you populate a prototype with real-life rather than sample data to make the testing environment less predictable.]

You might end up even more confused about all these types of prototypes. It’s okay, because every organization may choose concepts that work best for them and don’t care about the terminology. Luckily, regardless of which prototype you’re planning to build, you can apply any approach to creating it.

Prototyping approaches

Just like with software, you can go differently about building a prototype. Here are a few techniques and when they can be beneficial.

Rapid throwaway prototyping

As the name suggests, throwaway prototyping means that such a prototype will only be relevant for a short time, for example, for one sprint. During that time, it will go through a few cycles of modification and testing, but will eventually be discarded. Paper prototypes are by definition “throwaways” because after everyone is satisfied with it, a new prototype will be built. Throwaway prototypes are helpful to gather initial user feedback, which then is used to create an actual working prototype.

Evolutionary prototyping

This method is the closest to how prototyping is generally approached. After building a prototype, you present it to the users and gather feedback. Then, you introduce refinements based on that feedback and show the prototype to the users once more. You do it several times until the prototype is fully accepted by users. This way, the prototype evolves toward its final version. This approach ensures that the final product will likely meet user requirements since they actively participated in the process.

Incremental prototyping

Often used for large, enterprise products, incremental prototyping involves breaking the product into several smaller pieces and preparing prototypes for them individually. Each prototype is separately tested and refined before being merged into a whole prototype. To make sure that different pieces fit together in terms of look and feel, you need to prepare a style guide in advance. This technique significantly reduced the prototyping time, since you work on different parts of the system in parallel.

Extreme prototyping

Extreme prototyping is used specifically in web development and it’s divided into three stages, according to the three layers of the web app :

• Building static wireframes in HTML for the presentation layer.
• Transform HTML wireframes into a functional prototype by connecting them to simulated services.
• Implement the services into the final prototype.

Extreme prototyping allows you to demonstrate the prototype to users at every level. Don’t be too caught up with the classification, but rather use those approaches to your advantage. Below we will describe the main steps that go into prototyping, regardless of the method.

Stages of prototyping

Prototype creation is a design task, so you may approach it like any other designing project, from gathering information on what needs to be in a design to testing how well you interpreted user requirements with a finished design. Keep reading for more details and tips.

Step 1. Requirements gathering

In software development, requirements are goals or needs that the final product must meet. They are typically divided into functional (product features) and nonfunctiona l (system performance) requirements. A prototype is usually built on the basis of functional requirements, which are collected using different ways.

Understand the role of requirements in software development with our video

Interviews. Typically, a business analyst (BA) - a person directly responsible for documenting requirements - will sit down with one or a group of stakeholders and end users for an interview. The BA may ask questions about the interviewee’s jobs, tasks, and common problems.They may also ask to show how they currently solve those problems, what tools they already use and how. Often, interviews are recorded and transcribed, so the rest of the team has all the details and nothing is missed. A group interview can be an advantage since questions may spark further discussions and a BA might take note of what issues the group agrees upon. Read our tips on conducting user interviews in a dedicated article. Surveys. Questionnaires and surveys are used when your users/stakeholders are spread out geographically and you want to cover dozens to hundreds of them in a single sweep. Creating a good survey is an art in itself, so make sure you keep it minimal and understand how you will be using survey results. Start with defining what decisions you plan to make based on those answers and then identify the number of answers you’ll need to make a decision. For example, if at least 15 percent of respondents showed interest in a particular feature, you will be including that feature in the requirements document. User observations . Similarly to interviews, a BA will meet with a user for a session, but this time, they will observe the task being performed. A user is asked to show how they normally perform the task and the interviewer carefully records every event, sometimes specifying certain processes. Screen and video recordings can also be used. Unfortunately, a user can still act abnormally during observations and often, many sessions are needed to capture all the details. After gathering information from users and stakeholders, everyone responsible goes through the records and chooses the most prominent requirements that can be a great start for a prototype.

Step 2. Quick design

Here, the simplest version of a prototype (wireframes and mockups) is created. There are a few ways you can quickly design a UI. Sketches . You can sketch in a notebook, on the whiteboard in the office, or digitally, using drawing tools or online mind maps. Sketching is the fastest way to draw your UI ideas and it’s scrap sketches for the next, better idea. We wouldn’t suggest sketching as your main design method as there are more effective ones, but they definitely work best to quickly share your ideas. Tools to use: Miro , Diagrams.net , Sketch.io , physical drawing tools. Paper . An old, but loved by designers method, paper prototypes are cheap, can be done by anyone, and are a great activity for a team to collaborate on. Paper prototypes typically take the form of wireframes, and use folding or sliding elements and different layers. While it does take time to create complex paper wireframes, they still look rough, which might help your users feel more comfortable with sharing their critiques. Tools to use: printable prototype templates , phone stencils , physical drawing tools.

Example of sliding elements in a paper prototype

It’s better to leave all serious designing to the next stage.

Step 3. Prototype development

Based on the gathered requirements and the rough sketch of wireframes, an actual prototype is designed. As we already mentioned, it can take many forms, though the goal is to create a high-fidelity, interactive, design-rich product, so you may skip some of them if you don’t find it necessary. Still, let’s have a look at why and when you would want to use each form of a prototype. Clickable wireframes . Created with wireframing software, clickable wireframes can be used in simulations and usability testing. You can upload your sketches and paper wireframes into the tool and link the screens or create all wireframing elements digitally for a cleaner look. Although they are quick and easy to create, they might require explanation, since users might not realize this is not the finished look.

Example of clickable wireframes

Wireframing tools : Microsoft PowerPoint, Balsamiq , Figma , Justinmind , Lucidchart , Mockflow , etc. When to use . Clickable wireframes can be used in earlier stages when you want to test different versions of a design before committing to one. Mockups . Mockups are static, but more realistic depictions of the final product, which allow for addressing stakeholders’ requirements regarding branding, colors, fonts, iconography, and other elements. Mockups are not very popular, since many designers decide not to waste time and create hi-fi prototypes on top of wireframes. However, mockups are very important for emotional impact and testing crucial visual elements.

Creating a mockup Source: Framer

Mockup tools: InVision , Sketch , Figma , Adobe XD , Framer . When to use . Incorporate mockups in marketing and presentations to get stakeholders emotionally connected to the product even before the prototype is created. High-fidelity prototype . The closest resemblance to the final product, a hi-fi prototype allows for testing both how people react to the product’s visuals and user flow. Also, it’s the only way to test animations, transitions, and microinteractions. Besides, such a prototype gives the team a good idea of how much time and effort is needed for actual implementation. Unfortunately, hi-fi prototypes are harder and longer to do, plus making fixes does take time compared to wireframes. The possibilities of simulation though are very wide, with some tools giving you access to live data and even simple coding.

Example of an interactive, high-fidelity prototype

Prototyping tools : Proto.io, Figma, Flinto, Framer, Principle, Invision. When to use . The final stage of design, hi-fi prototyping, is done right before you start the development to validate the usability of the product. It’s also an irreplaceable aid in pitches and presentations. We recommend not starting engineering before the prototype is ready and agreed upon as it will save you from many unpredictable issues in the future.

Step 4. Prototype testing and refinements

User testing reporting functionality Source: UserTesting

Just as with interviews, the results of user evaluation sessions are forwarded to everyone responsible for analysis. The team gathers to decide if the prototype needs further refinement (typically – yes) and starts planning redesign tasks. After that, the cycle repeats. Only your company decides if you’ve done enough refinements and the prototype is ready since there will always be more things to change.

Step 5. Product implementation

The validated prototype is shared with the engineering team and so the long and complex process of development starts. Still, the job of the UX/UI team doesn’t stop there. Following the agile development methodology, each and every part of the system must be regularly tested and iterated , so usability will be checked on the actual working product. Such testing will follow the same interviewing and validation practices as for prototyping. After the launch, the product’s usability is regularly monitored and tested, especially before rolling out new features. If in a few years you decide to go through a redesign, you might want to create a prototype once again.

Prototype away

A prototype is a conduit of an idea. There’s no better way to share with others what the product looks like in your imagination than by building a model, a simulation. A prototype is an argument, a verification that you know what you’re talking about since you did some preliminary work and have a rough representation of what the final result will be like. Having a prototype is common sense and a normal, everyday process within product design and development . One of the main rules , if you want to list your project on Kickstarter, is to demonstrate a prototype – an honest and clear representation of your product in its current state with minimal photo editing. This is important to gain the long-term support of backers and nurture the atmosphere of trust on the website. With a prototype, you can trust yourself, your team, your stakeholders, and vendors, and build something amazing with minimum risk.

Prototyping in Design Thinking: Complete Guide with Examples

Home Blog Agile Prototyping in Design Thinking: Complete Guide with Examples

One of the most effective and impactful skills a designer can acquire is prototyping, which includes anything from making straightforward wireframes to testing completely functional mockups. It might be revolutionary to incorporate prototyping into your process of product development. It can enhance the experience, strengthen the bond between the team members, and save time.

However, building a prototype in design thinking is not sufficient. We also need to comprehend the steps used in creating the first iterations of a product. The processes of prototyping and testing are sometimes combined into one step, although they should be carried out as two separate steps in a Design Thinking course .

What Is Prototyping?

Creating a physical version of a concept or experiment is a process known as prototyping. A prototype is basically a mockup of the solution that we want to create. Examples of prototypes are a storyboard, a wall of stick-on notes, a role-playing game, a space, an object, or an interface. Your prototype's resolution should reflect how far along your project is.

You may learn rapidly and consider several possibilities by keeping your prototypes simple and concise during early investigations. The ability of the design team, the user, and others to experience and interact with a prototype is crucial to its success. Your ability to empathize more and come up with clever solutions can be improved by what you learn from those interactions.

What is Prototyping in Design Thinking?

Prototyping is a crucial phase in the Design Thinking process. Designers build an almost-working version or mockup of the product, known as a prototype, and test it with potential customers and stakeholders to see whether it truly answers the problems of its consumers.

The purpose of creating the design thinking prototype is to check the viability of the existing design and possibly look into what potential customers may have to say about the product. It permits appropriate testing and investigation of design ideas before excessive resources are employed.

Why do We Need to Prototype in Design Process?

One of the phases before releasing the finished product is building a prototype. Creating a product prototype has several benefits. Here are a few ideas for why prototyping is essential during the design process.

• Rapid prototyping design thinking enables its deployment by identifying the elements of an idea that are challenging or impossible to achieve. Making a prototype reveals technical and economic limitations that were not previously known.
• By analyzing the site's overall navigation, prototypes assist in testing the usability of a website.
• By gathering feedback from users in the form of reviews, recommendations, and testimonials, prototypes aid in the presentation of ideas and concepts to users in a more tangible way.
• As it immediately influences the most important aspects of a project, namely the resource, time, and budget, prototypes aid in minimizing risks, identifying covert flaws and functional gaps.
• Through their ability to entice potential customers to invest in them, prototypes help to simulate the ultimate product. It assists in evaluating the accuracy of a design and locating design flaws ahead of the final stage.
• Exposure to prototypes helps bring all the concepts together and lets stakeholders view the product from a fresh angle.

How to Create a Prototype? Tips and Best Practices  

We now clearly understand  prototype design thinking, its importance, and the several sorts of prototypes that can be used during the design process. The only thing left to do is to come up with your own. Here is some advice that will assist you in your journey: 

Select The Appropriate Prototype  

Before you start working on a prototype, think about where you are in the design process and the time and resources you have at your disposal. Early on, low-fidelity prototypes make sense, but as you release your product, you should switch to high-fidelity prototypes. 

Set Up Clear Objectives  

Know exactly what you expect your prototype to do before you begin. What, in other words, are you hoping to learn from testing your prototype? Always keep your research questions in mind as you concentrate on user demands. 

Use Proper Equipment  

If you're new to digital prototyping, experiment with some of the most well-liked tools available. Before you begin prototyping, choose a tool with the required features and capabilities and become familiar with its user interface. This will simplify the prototyping procedure. 

Make a Move  

Prototyping is a key component of design thinking. Therefore do it whenever you need to. As long as you keep in mind that the Design Thinking process isn't exactly linear, you can quickly create a prototype. 

How Does Prototyping Work? 

Beginning a project with a prototype can help you establish your general goals and, more importantly, can help you figure out what doesn't work right away. Below are three phases of the prototype in design thinking  explaining how the prototype works. 

Action-Orientation Bias  

Because you will test each assumption in practice rather than by thinking it through conceptually, the analytical study will not be able to take hold. You can further develop or even discard your original notion by employing controlled tests to either validate or reject your assumptions in their actual environment. 

Finding Out Through Doing  

The discovery of new insights and the exploration of uncharted possibilities are two of the most crucial components of design thinking. For this reason, the discipline emphasizes education and team-building exercises that boost learning potential. As a result, your team can iterate quickly, changing your test models and bringing you closer to the result. 

Ingenious Serendipity  

One would assume that all we need to do is flick a switch to a success mindset, given the way ground-breaking technologies, start-ups, or other novel ideas are promoted to excite and encourage creativity. Prototyping allows you and your team to observe and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of your ideas, learn from customer input, and generate small opportunities for an artistic chance. 

Types of Prototyping 

There are two main t ypes of prototyping in design thinking: 

Low-fidelity Prototyping  

Low-fidelity prototyping presents the simplest possible structure, visuals, user flows, and layouts so that you can concentrate solely on the core idea without being distracted by any unnecessary UI features. The low-fidelity prototype is frequently the earliest stage of an app or website's design. It is generally created faster and is cost-effective; however, it can offer limited experience or testing by users. 

High-fidelity Prototyping  

Prototyping with high fidelity (HFP) shows almost all of the product's aspects, including intricate user interfaces and working pages and elements. This enables you to thoroughly test usability before beginning development to identify any potential problems. This type of prototyping offers a near to real experience to garner meaningful feedback or showcase demo to potential investors or stakeholders. You must consider enrolling for one of the best Agile certifications . 

Guidelines for Prototyping 

To create a prototype, intellectuals must produce physical goods, which may be miniature versions of the intended answer. The following are the top five principles for prototypes: 

• Start the prototype's construction as soon as possible. Don't put things off. 
• Spending too much time on a single prototype will be a waste. 
• The final user must be considered when creating the prototypes. 
• The prototype must provide the user with an experience rather than just being a useless piece of junk. 
• Consider open-ended questions that the user might ask you after interacting with the prototype. 

Stages in Prototyping  

There are five design thinking prototyping phases, as discussed below, regardless of the required level of fidelity.

Define the Goal  

The developer must create a broad vision for their product at this stage in the prototyping process. This stage could also function as a verbal description and could contain sketches. The creator can decide whether prototyping is necessary or whether they should reevaluate their original plan. 

Highlight Core Elements  

Attempting to make the prototype and final product similar is a mistake made by many creators. This is helpful when the prototype is used to convince investors of its value, but it's not required for most other uses. The designer should choose one or two standout aspects of their product to emphasize in their prototype. 

Manufacture  

The longest portion of the process is developing the prototype because the designer must weigh all the available possibilities. Consider using 3D printing, CNC machining, powder bed fusions, mold building, and casting as some common prototyping techniques. The decision will typically be influenced by the available materials, the schedule, and the price. 

Evaluation  

After releasing the initial prototype, the designer will want to assess it, think about updating choices, and look for methods to streamline the procedure as a whole. This can call for a few minor adjustments, or it might mean throwing out the entire initial concept and beginning again at step one. 

Presentation  

Depending on the goal of the prototype, the presentation phase will change. It can entail producing many models to test with customers, submitting the design for a patent, or showcasing it to potential investors. The presentation phase will assist in gauging interest and directing manufacturing techniques, depending on whether a straightforward small run or larger mass production is required. 

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Why is Prototyping in Design Thinking Popular? 

The fundamental concept behind the prototype model is that a throwaway prototype is made to understand the specifications rather than freezing them before designing or coding can be done. Most of the time, prototypes are not fully functional systems and lack many details.

The objective is to give a system general functionality.   Prototyping in design thinking has many benefits, including early error discovery, quicker user input, and a better knowledge of the system being produced for the users. Hence, prototyping is widely used. 

Benefits of Prototyping in Design Thinking  

Prototyping lets you enjoy the following benefits: 

• Give all stakeholders a clear image of the potential benefits, risks, and costs connected with where a prototype might lead by having a solid basis to generate ideas for improvements. 
• Helps foster a feeling of ownership in all interested parties, encouraging emotional commitment to the final success of the product. 
• Reduces the number of mistakes that need to be fixed before the product is released to shorten time-to-market. 

Prototyping In Design Thinking Examples  

Some of the most common  prototype design thinking examples are as follows: 

• Rough paper prototypes of digital interfaces.
• Simple sketches
• Storyboards
• Role-playing to act out a service giving ideas.

Conclusion  

The use of prototypes is crucial for product teams and designers. To build a fundamentally solid app or website, it's critical to visualize and test ideas early in the design-creation process. This also helps to reduce expenses while constructing the lifelike model you'll have before development.

If you are looking forward to doing a course in design thinking, then KnowledgeHut Design Thinking training provides you with the necessary knowledge and skills.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

A prototype is an original version of a product that has been produced to test a theory or procedure. We utilize a prototype to assess a new design to improve precision for users and system analysts. 

A prototype's most significant benefit is that it replicates the actual and future products. Before committing any resources required for deployment, it might encourage buyers to buy the product. 

When comparing the original mockup and the current design, it's simple to see how the customer's input affected the final product, which enables users to complete necessary tasks with the least amount of time and effort. Hence, customer involvement and feedback are crucial to the success of our design process. 

When the needs for the product are unclear or unpredictable, the prototyping model should be employed. Also, when requirements are shifting quickly, they can be applied.

Here are four easy steps for making a prototype - 

• Create your ideas now 
• Make a simplified version of your idea 
• Make a realistic prototype 
• Develop your prototype until it is perfect 

Lindy Quick

Lindy Quick, SPCT, is a dynamic Transformation Architect and Senior Business Agility Consultant with a proven track record of success in driving agile transformations. With expertise in multiple agile frameworks, including SAFe, Scrum, and Kanban, Lindy has led impactful transformations across diverse industries such as manufacturing, defense, insurance/financial, and federal government. Lindy's exceptional communication, leadership, and problem-solving skills have earned her a reputation as a trusted advisor. Currently associated with KnowledgeHut and upGrad, Lindy fosters Lean-Agile principles and mindset through coaching, training, and successful execution of transformations. With a passion for effective value delivery, Lindy is a sought-after expert in the field.

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Prototype Definition

A prototype is a preliminary version or model of a product, system, or design created to test and validate its functionality, usability, and feasibility before full-scale production or implementation.

What is a Prototype?

A prototype is a tangible representation of an idea or concept that allows designers, developers, and stakeholders to visualize and interact with a product or design in its early stages . It serves as a proof of concept, enabling the evaluation and refinement of critical features, user experience, and overall design direction.

Benefits of Prototyping

Prototyping offers numerous benefits throughout the product development process. Firstly, it allows designers to gather valuable feedback from users and stakeholders early on, ensuring that the final product meets their needs and expectations. By testing and iterating on prototypes, designers can identify and address potential issues or flaws before investing significant time and resources into production.

Furthermore, prototypes facilitate effective communication and collaboration among team members and stakeholders. They provide a common reference point for discussions, allowing everyone involved to visualize and understand the proposed solution. This shared understanding helps to align expectations and reduce misunderstandings, leading to more efficient decision-making and a smoother development process.

Types of Prototypes

Low fidelity prototypes.

There are various types of prototypes, each serving a specific purpose and level of fidelity. Low-fidelity prototypes, such as paper sketches or wireframes, are quick and inexpensive. They are ideal for exploring and validating early-stage ideas, as they focus on a product or design’s core functionality and structure.

Medium Fidelity Prototypes

Medium-fidelity prototypes, such as interactive mockups or clickable prototypes, offer greater detail and interactivity. They allow users to navigate the product and interact with essential features, providing a more realistic experience. These prototypes are helpful in testing usability, user flows, and overall user experience.

High Fidelity Prototypes

High-fidelity prototypes, however, closely resemble the final product regarding visual design, interactions, and functionality. They are often created using specialized prototyping tools or even coded prototypes. High-fidelity prototypes are valuable for conducting advanced user testing, gathering detailed feedback, and simulating the final product experience.

Paper Prototypes

Paper prototypes are a foundational tool in the early stages of design. They are hand-drawn, low-fidelity sketches used to map out the basic layout and user flow, particularly for websites and mobile apps. These prototypes are quick to create, inexpensive, and particularly effective for brainstorming, concept validation, and early user feedback. They encourage collaboration and creativity in workshops and team sessions.

Digital Prototypes

Digital prototypes represent a more advanced stage of prototyping. These are high-fidelity, interactive models created using specialized software. They closely mimic the final product’s functionality and design, allowing for detailed usability testing. Digital prototypes are essential for testing user interactions, presenting to stakeholders, and gathering accurate user feedback. They bridge the gap between initial concepts and the final product , providing a realistic experience of the intended design.

Process of Prototyping

The process of creating a prototype typically involves several stages. It begins with defining the prototype’s objectives and scope , then gathering user requirements and conducting research. This information is then used to generate ideas and concepts translated into initial sketches or wireframes.

Once the initial concepts are refined, the prototype is developed using appropriate tools and techniques. This may involve creating interactive mockups, coding a functional prototype, or utilizing specialized prototyping software. The prototype is then tested and evaluated by users and stakeholders, and feedback is collected for further iterations and improvements.

Examples of Prototypes

Prototypes can be found in various industries and fields, ranging from product design to software development. For example, in the automotive industry, car manufacturers create prototypes to test new vehicle designs, assess aerodynamics, and evaluate performance. These prototypes allow engineers to identify and address any issues before mass production.

In user experience (UX) design, prototypes are commonly used to test and refine digital interfaces. Designers create interactive prototypes that simulate the user journey and allow users to interact with the interface. This enables designers to gather feedback on usability, identify pain points, and make informed design decisions.

From ProtoPie’s discussion on high-fidelity, high-functionality advanced prototyping, it’s essential to recognize the need for a mindset shift towards understanding a product’s deeper functioning, similar to a programmer’s perspective. This approach is crucial in advanced prototyping, where the intricate details and functionalities of the prototype are as important as its visual aspects.

Real-World Example – macOS Calculator App:

An excellent example of this approach is the detailed prototyping process of the macOS Calculator app. This example illustrates how breaking down each user interaction contributes to a more functional and practical prototype​​​​​​, no matter how simple it seems.

In conclusion, a prototype is a preliminary version or model of a product, system, or design created to test and validate its functionality, usability, and feasibility. Prototyping offers numerous benefits, including early feedback, effective communication, and risk reduction. By utilizing different prototypes and following a structured process, designers can create successful products and designs that meet user needs and expectations.

Related Terms

• SMART Goal Setting
• Moscow Prioritization
• Stakeholders Analysis
• Product Design
• Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

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Table of Contents

Prototype definition & meaning, what is a prototype, 10 types of prototypes, prototype uses, purpose, importance, what’s in a prototype parts, how to design a prototype, prototype vs. wireframe, what’s the difference between a prototype, mockup & model, prototypes sizes.

• Prototype Ideas

Graphic Design

Prototypes are crucial tools used to simulate end products and they are mostly used by software developers, product designers, programmers, UX or user experience teams, and UI or user-interface designers when testing products before launch. Developing clear and well-designed prototypes is an integral way to test, evaluate, and validate product concepts or ideas and assess customer needs and preferences.

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Travel prototype.

Real Estate Prototype

App Prototype

Yoga Studio Prototype

Login Page Prototype

Watch Store Prototype

Mobile UI Prototype

Business Prototype

Website Prototype

Project Prototype

Creates Solutions

Increased customer satisfaction, better product design choices, user-centered approach, initial product design, product versions, conceptual styles, features and functions.

Prototype Ideas & Examples

• Design Prototype Ideas and Examples
• Game Prototype Ideas and Examples
• Service Prototype Ideas and Examples
• iPhone Prototype Ideas and Examples
• Corporate Prototype Ideas and Examples
• Product Prototype Ideas and Examples
• Shopping Prototype Ideas and Examples
• Function Prototype Ideas and Examples
• Desktop Prototype Ideas and Examples

What should be included in a prototype?

How do i make a prototype project, what are the phases of a prototype, what is the basic prototype, what makes a good prototype, what are the goals of the prototype, when should prototyping be used, what are the main reasons we prototype, does the prototype have to be coded, what are non-working prototypes, more in graphic design.

Food Delivery Mobile Prototype Template

Corporate prototype template, iphone prototype template, game prototype template, function prototype template, website prototype template, app prototype template, product prototype template, service prototype template, design thinking prototype template.

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Prototyping In Design Thinking: Definition, Types & Benefits

The journey of developing a new product involves various steps. While it's tempting to dive head-first into the project, you'll do well to remember the adage – ''by failing to prepare, you prepare to fail''. 

Planning and testing your ideas before implementing them is the best way to ensure your brand can release the right products. That is what prototyping does – implement ideas into tangible form and explore their real-world impact before finally executing them.

Let's get a closer understanding of what, how, and why of prototyping.

What Is Prototyping

Prototypes are early samples, models, or releases of products built to test a concept or process. There are many contexts in which semantics can be used, for example, in design, electronics, and software programming. Generally, prototypes are used by system analysts and users to improve the precision of a new design.

Prototyping is an essential step in the Design Thinking process and is often used in the final testing phase. Every product has a target audience and is designed to solve their problems in some way. To assess whether a product really solves its users' problems, designers create an almost-working model or mock-up of the product, called a prototype, and test it with prospective users and stakeholders. Thus, prototyping allows designers to test the practicability of the current design and potentially investigate how trial users think and feel about the product. It enables proper testing and exploring design concepts before too many resources get used.

A prototype is a product built to test ideas and changes until it resembles the final product. You can mock-up every feature and interaction in your prototype as in your fully developed product, check if your idea works, and verify the overall user-experience (UX) strategy. 

Prototyping allows you to build simple, small-scale prototypes of your products, and use them to observe, record, and assess user performance levels or the users' general behavior and reactions to the overall design. Designers can then make appropriate refinements or possible alterations in the right direction. 

Prototypes can be of any form, from simple sketches and storyboards to rough paper prototypes and even role-playing prototypes that enact a service offering. They do not need to be complete products – in fact, you can prototype a part of a product to test that part of your solution. Often, prototypes are quick and rough - designed for early-stage testing and understanding – and at times full-formed and detailed – aimed for pilot trials towards the project's final stages.

To sum up, prototyping allows early iteration of the product during design thinking, thereby validating its core functionality. 

What is Prototype in Design

The purpose of a prototype in design thinking is to test products (and product ideas) prior to launch. Prototypes are simulations or samples of final products that are used as testing tools. It is intended to test products (and product ideas) before investing a great deal of time and resources into creating a sellable product

Why We Need to Prototype

One of the key aspects of prototyping is that it generates empathy for prospective consumers. In this respect, designing software or designing products for human use are not much different. Any product designed without understanding the customer's needs can result in unnecessary features, poor designs, and a host of problems.   

With prototyping, you can enjoy various benefits like:

Evaluate Technical Feasibility

Creating a prototype makes it possible to concretize an idea and assess which features pose difficulty in implementation. Prototyping can thus identify unanticipated physical, technical, or financial constraints. 

Enhance Website Quality

A well-designed prototype will enable you to:

• Conduct testing for site usability
• Inspect site navigation
• Conveniently access information on the site
• Determine correct placement of visual accents – what visitors should see first

Effectively Present Idea to Customers 

Prototyping makes it possible to present your future product to potential customers before the actual launch of the product. It could also allow you to devise your marketing strategies better and start pre-sales. 

Reduced Risks

Projects with a complete prototyping process are at lower risk than projects without prototyping. This is because prototyping directly affects project resources, time, and budget. Through prototyping, it is possible to estimate the resources needed and time for development. 

Iterate at Lower Costs

Information gathered from potential customers through prototyping makes it possible to improve the product until an optimal product is formulated. A good idea can be to create several prototypes before the launch of mass production so that the additional costs of unsold products and reprogramming can be curtailed. 

Simulate the Future Product

The most important advantage of prototyping is that it creates a model of the final product. It can help lure customers to invest in the product prior to any resource allocation for implementation. You can discover design errors and check their correctness before going into production. 

Provide Focused Feedback

Exposing the prototype helps to get focused customer feedback on the desired qualities in the product. This feedback is critical to understand the needs and expectations of users, business requirements and gain a clear idea of what the product is headed for. 

Through prototyping, the design team gets essential information that helps them to plan out the implementation. A prototype helps build user stories and emphasize on user needs. This brings substantial benefits to the scrum teams. 

Quick and Easy

A designer can quickly develop a ready-to-implement prototype even from a simple idea on paper if they understand the logic and functionality of the product.  

Types of Prototyping

Some of the common types of prototyping that you can use include:

Sketches and Diagrams

Perhaps the most basic form of prototyping, sketching, requires minimal effort and does not necessarily require artistic drawing skills to serve its purpose. Use sketches to begin the process of conceptualizing and building a new product and share the concept with teammates for more ideas and discussions. 

Paper Interface

Digital products, especially websites, mobile apps, web services, and other screen-related products, require a range of prototyping methods en route to the final design and development. Paper interfaces prove to be handy for early-stage prototyping for digital products. You can sketch paper interfaces or draw and cut out usable parts of a user interface like a drop-down menu or text field. 

Storyboards

Storyboarding is an excellent way of telling stories and guiding targeted customers through a user experience. A technique to be used for early prototyping, storyboards allow you to visualize how users would experience a problem or product and present it in a series of images or sketches. Stories help us gather information on users, tasks, and goals while at the same time evoking new ideas through collaboration with other designers. Drawing out a user's experience helps us better understand their world and to think from their perspective. 

Role-Playing

Role-playing or experiential prototyping enables designers to explore situations within the system that you're targeting physically. Role-playing can be best used in capturing and enacting the user's experience of using a product or service. Consider simulating their experience to gain an empathic understanding of users. You can create props, use objects and audio simulations to imitate the user environment. 

Physical Models

For a physical product, you can use a wide variety of materials to build a prototype for testing. Physical models are often built using paper, cardboard, clay, foam, or by repurposing existing objects. A physical model is used to bring an intangible idea into a physical, three-dimensional form. This enables much better user testing and can evoke discussions on the form factor of the proposed product. 

Wizard of Oz Prototypes

Prototypes with faked functions that you can use to test users are called Wizard of Oz Prototypes. Like in the wizard of Oz story where the wizard creates an ominous, deceptive appearance from behind a screen – this prototype allows you to mimic certain aspects of your product to save time and resources. For example, interactivity that comes from a human and not an algorithm can be tweaked such that users believe the latter is the case. The most famous example of Wizard of Oz Prototypes is a digital system prototype, where the user is tricked into believing that the system responses are computer-generated when they are human-controlled. 

User-Driven Prototypes

A user-driven prototype does not test on users but allows the user to create some design, so you learn more about their thinking. This type of prototyping adds to the benefits of design thinking . Its purpose is not to use the user-generated solutions but to use their designs to gain empathy with them or fine-tune your product according to their ideas. 

With such a wide variety of prototypes that can be built, it might get overwhelming to decide what to choose. Pay attention to people, objects, location, and interactions while building prototypes in design thinking. 

To be an excellent designer, you need to learn how to keep your efforts efficient and consistent. 

Learn how to improve your design thinking techniques by enrolling in the Design Thinking Leader Master’s program from Simplilearn.

Q1. What is prototyping?

Prototyping in a project is creating a sample or model of a project to test the concept. 

Q2. What are the different types of prototyping?

The 4 types of project prototyping are feasibility prototypes, low-fidelity user prototypes, high-fidelity user prototypes and live-data prototypes. 

Q3. What are popular UI prototyping tools?

Figma, InVision Studio, Adobe XD, Webflow, Axure RP, Origami Studio and Justinmind are some popular prototyping tools. 

Q4. What is prototyping in a project?

Prototyping in a project is a technique to experiment with new ideas at a low cost. 

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Prototype Definition:

A replica of a product as it will be manufactured, which may include such details as color, graphics, packaging and instructions

One of the essential early steps in the inventing process is creating a prototype--which, simply defined, is a three-dimensional version of your vision. But what exactly should a prototype look like? First, it depends on your idea. Second, it depends on your budget and your goals. If possible, it's great to start with a handmade prototype, no matter how rudimentary. We've seen prototypes made from the simplest of household items: socks, diaper tabs, household glue, empty milk containers--you name it. If it works for your initial demonstration purposes, it's as good as the most expensive materials.

Eventually, if you decide to move forward with your invention, you'll probably need what's known as a "pre-production" prototype--especially if you plan to manufacture it yourself rather than license it. But as a first step, a homemade "presentation" prototype can give you a good running start.

A prototype provides other advantages, as well:

1. It enables you to test and refine the functionality of your design. Sure, your idea works perfectly in theory. It's not until you start physically creating it that you'll encounter flaws in your thinking. That's why another great reason to develop a prototype is to test the functionality of your idea. You'll never know the design issues and challenges until you begin actually taking your idea from theory to reality.

2. It makes it possible to test the performance of various materials. For example, your heart may be set on using metal--until you test it and realize that, say, plastic performs better at a lower cost for your particular application. The prototype stage will help you determine the best materials.

3. It'll help you describe your product more effectively with your team, including your attorney, packaging or marketing expert, engineers and potential business partners.

4. It will encourage others to take you more seriously. When you arrive with a prototype in hand to meet any professional--from your own attorney to a potential licensing company--you separate yourself from the dozens of others who've approached them with only vague ideas in mind. Instead, you'll be viewed as a professional with a purpose, as opposed to just an inventor with a potentially good idea.

So now that you know that creating a prototype is a vital step in your invention process, how exactly do you move forward and actually do it? This stage in the inventing process is possibly the period of greatest learning. This is where your words and thoughts change from "Can I?" to "How will I?"

Making a prototype by hand is a great way to start bringing your product to life. Remember, there are no rules! Give yourself permission to experiment. Look around the house and select materials that you can use to test to see if your idea works.

If you anticipate your product will be made from plastic, there's a great product out there that's ideal for creating plastic prototypes. It's called Shapelock. When heated in the microwave or with your hair dryer, it becomes pliable, kind of like clay, so you can mold it any way you'd like. When dry, it becomes a hard plastic. The best part? It's inexpensive, and you can reheat it and reuse it again and again. Find it at www.shapelock.com .

Of course, your product could also be made from any number of materials, ranging from metals to chemicals to textiles. When using any material, try to be open to alternatives you may not have originally considered. For example, you may be convinced that you want to use cotton. If this is the case, challenge yourself by asking "Why?" Perhaps another material might work better, such as a stretch material like Lycra. Or how about using mesh, canvas, nylon or leather? What about taking a leap and trying Neoprene? This is the time to say "What if" and allow yourself the freedom to explore. Put aside your original thoughts--you may end up coming back to them, but at least then you'll know you've made the best decision.

Once you've developed your prototype as far as you reasonably can, it's time to consider hiring a professional to help you with the next steps. There are many avenues you can take at this stage. You may wish to hire professional prototype developers, engineers and designers, but others may be able to help you as well, including a handyman, a machinist or a student from a local industrial design college. The complexity and materials to be used in your specific product will help drive this decision. Your budget may also be a consideration--a handyman or machinist, for example, will probably charge much less per hour than an engineer, and their services may be perfectly sufficient if your design is relatively straightforward.

If you do decide to go with a professional prototype developer, there are a few ways to find them. You could try the Yellow Pages first, or you could try searching on www.thomasnet.com (formerly known as www.thomasregister.com), a one-stop resource with all the information you need. It offers a database of 650,000 manufacturers, distributors and service providers--including prototype developers--to choose from, broken down by state. In a matter of minutes, you can find the expertise you're looking for.

You should also do your research and consider new and emerging technologies. For example, there's a relatively new method of prototype production out there called rapid prototyping , which uses a technology called stereolithography . It enables you to have plastic prototypes made quickly from computer-aided drawings (CAD) by a large tooling machine, rather than from an expensive injection mold. Rapid prototypes can cost as little as a few hundred dollars each (depending on complexity), but they're often a bargain considering the alternatives. For example, creating an injection mold for a product in the Unites States can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000.

The prototyping stage is a great time to use all your untapped creative ability and to explore all the possibilities that are on the market. Don't limit yourself to any preconceived notions--whether it comes to material use or the types of professionals you can consult--and explore as much as you can as you begin bringing your product idea to life.

More from Inventing

Exclusive legal rights that protect works of authorship, composition or artistry. A copyright protects the publication, production or sale of the rights to a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work or computer program or to the use of a commercial print or label.

Intellectual Property

The ownership of ideas. Unlike tangible assets to your business such as computers or your office, intellectual property is a collection of ideas and concepts.

An object, process or technique that displays an element of novelty. In certain circumstances, legal protection may be granted to an invention by way of a patent.

A form of protection that provides a person or legal entity with exclusive rights for making, using or selling a concept or invention and excludes others from doing the same for the duration of the patent

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