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Why should I Prototype?
Home » Entrepreneurship » Prototyping » Why should I Prototype?The best reason to prototype is to save time and resources. Compared to the actual product, prototypes are easy and inexpensive to create. For a minimal investment, you can find usability and design problems and adjust your product before you seriously invest in the final design and technologies. It's important to understand why you're building what you're building before you begin. If you start with clear goals, you can be direct and successful in your efforts. The reasons for creating prototypes fall into three basic categories:
• Prove a concept. Disagreements among team members can occur when making decisions about the future direction of a project. A prototype can prove that an idea or new method has value. A prototype can help demonstrate that an idea works, convey qualities in a visual and interactive way, and encourage team members to think about problems from another point of view.
• Explore a design. If you design products that are interactive, the only way to explore how it will be used is to create a mock-up and interact with it. The mock-up can be evaluated in a structured way or can be the way to express how something should work or look to a developer. At times, a designer might be experimenting to get a sense for what method might work best. Design explorations should focus on trying to solve specific problems that are identified in the product.
• Explore technology. Developers considering implementation methods to a problem often try out different coding practices to see if they work well. Using a specific coding approach within each technology has different tradeoffs. Sometimes a prototype represents an exploration into what technology will work well to support a certain product or user interface feature.
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