How do you collaborate and co-create with your team and partners in prototyping and testing?

1 Define the challenge

Before you start prototyping and testing, you need to have a clear and shared understanding of the challenge you are trying to solve, and the goals you are trying to achieve. This means involving your team and partners in defining the problem, the context, the target audience, and the criteria for success. You can use tools such as problem statements, personas, customer journeys, and value propositions to articulate and align your vision and scope.

2 Generate ideas

Once you have defined the challenge, you can start generating ideas for potential solutions. This is where you can unleash your creativity and diverge from the obvious or conventional. You can use techniques such as brainstorming, mind mapping, sketching, or storyboarding to explore different possibilities and scenarios. You can also invite feedback and input from your team and partners, who can help you refine, combine, or expand your ideas.

3 Select the best ideas

After generating a lot of ideas, you need to narrow them down to the most promising ones. This is where you can apply your critical thinking and converge on the most feasible, desirable, and viable solutions. You can use methods such as dot voting, ranking, or scoring to evaluate and prioritize your ideas. You can also involve your team and partners in the selection process, who can bring their expertise, insights, and opinions.

4 Build prototypes

Now that you have selected the best ideas, you need to build prototypes that can test them in a realistic way. Prototypes are low-fidelity representations of your solutions that can elicit feedback and learning from your customers. You can use materials such as paper, cardboard, digital tools, or mock-ups to create prototypes that are quick, cheap, and easy to iterate. You can also collaborate and co-create with your team and partners in building prototypes, who can contribute their skills, knowledge, and resources.

5 Test prototypes

Finally, you need to test your prototypes with your customers, who are the ultimate judges of your solutions. Testing is the process of observing, measuring, and learning from how your customers interact with your prototypes, and what they think and feel about them. You can use techniques such as interviews, surveys, experiments, or analytics to collect and analyze data from your tests. You can also collaborate and co-create with your team and partners in testing prototypes, who can help you design, conduct, and interpret your tests.

6 Iterate and improve

Prototyping and testing are not one-time events, but rather ongoing cycles of learning and improvement. Based on the feedback and data you gather from your tests, you need to iterate and improve your prototypes until they meet your goals and satisfy your customers. You can use tools such as feedback loops, lean canvases, or roadmaps to plan and track your iterations and improvements. You can also collaborate and co-create with your team and partners in iterating and improving, who can help you identify, implement, and validate your changes.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?