Prototyping and testing are essential stages of product development, as they help you validate your assumptions, gather feedback, and improve your design. However, not all prototypes and tests are created equal. How can you ensure that you are following the best practices for prototyping and testing new product ideas? Here are some tips to help you.
A prototype is a representation of your product idea that you can use to communicate, explore, and test. Depending on your goals and resources, you can choose different levels of fidelity for your prototype, from low to high. Low-fidelity prototypes are simple and quick to make, such as sketches, wireframes, or paper models. They are useful for testing basic concepts, functionality, and user flows. High-fidelity prototypes are more realistic and detailed, such as interactive mockups, animations, or working models. They are useful for testing visual design, usability, and user feedback. Choose the level of fidelity that matches your needs and budget, and don't overdo it.
One cool way to make a quick prototype is to make a Miro board. You create a Miro board and put some cards with ideas on them. Then during the user interview, you ask the user to sort these cards into buckets and explain their choices. For example, you can put the names of the potential features from your roadmap on the cards and then ask the users to put them in "Must have" and "Nice to have" buckets. The insights you can have from this exercise are invaluable as it's a very direct way to understand how the users are thinking.
If you're in the fuzzy front end of ideas, then low fidelity is the way to go. This is the "flare" phase when you are searching an array of possibilities. Build time in the schedule to invite stakeholders and key customers to participatory workshops where ideas and lo-fi making are encouraged. Prepare research to build a hypothesis against which you can test and challenge ideas. Then, as you evaluate which ideas to pursue (ex., viable, feasible, desirable, ethical, sustainable) the subsequent prototypes evolve with increasing fidelity in "focus" steps. Product design and development are iterative journeys prone to creeping days and dollars. Practice generative, front-end scoping with lo-fi to meet clearer and more profitable outcomes.
Testing your prototype with real or potential users is crucial to get insights into their needs, preferences, and behaviors. However, you don't have to wait until you have a polished prototype to test it. You can involve your users early and often in the prototyping process, and get their feedback on different aspects of your product idea. For example, you can test your value proposition, your user personas, your user stories, your sketches, your wireframes, and so on. This way, you can validate your assumptions, identify problems, and iterate faster.
The Prototype mode is the iterative generation of artifacts intended to answer questions that get you closer to your final solution. In the early stages of a project that question may be broad – such as “do drivers enjoy delivering food to customers ?” In this stage, you start developing low-fidelity or high-fidelity prototypes for your product. This can be as simple as a sketch on a table or something using PowerPoint. If you are doing this in a tam setting everyone in the room gets to create and sketch and prototype separately this eliminates any biases and helps get better ideas. Once all the prototypes are ready you review them as a group critique and move on to the next prototype. remix and improve to create one single prototype.
Most of the ideas shared, so far, about prototyping pertain to products that are incremental improvements or replacements to existing products, with which the users (marketplace) are mostly familiar. Through my career, I found it most challenging when you're inventing (/introducing) new products- in which case, it is critical to select test markets/users rather carefully, and yes iterating faster and smarter will be key to the successful introduction of the product
When the new product involves disruptive technology, partnering with a limited number of beta testers is essential. The beta test group should move into the new product incrementally. The innovator should be wary of being too successful when introducing new technology to not replace the existing product in a customer’s supply chain until the beta testing is complete. The other main concern is confirmation bias. It is challenging for entrepreneurs to filter feedback properly. Negative feedback is critical, but many entrepreneurs attempt to explain away any negative results to continue to push forward. However, accepting and addressing negative feedback is a great way to speed up development while creating a safer, more secure product.
Before testing your prototype, it is essential to define what you want to learn from it and how you will measure it. This will help you design your test, select the appropriate test methods, and analyze the results. For instance, you can use your prototype to answer questions such as: does it solve the user's problem or need? Does it meet the user's expectations and preferences? Does it provide a clear and intuitive user experience? Are there any usability issues or errors? To measure these questions, you can use metrics such as task completion rate (the percentage of users who can complete a specific task with the prototype), task time (the average time it takes for users to complete a specific task with the prototype), user satisfaction (the degree of user satisfaction with the prototype, measured by surveys, ratings, or interviews), and user feedback (the qualitative feedback from users, such as comments, suggestions, or complaints).
When defining your success metrics, it’s important to pay attention to counter-metrics as well. You want to ensure your experiment doesn’t have adverse effects somewhere else in the product.
It helps a lot when you define the objective of the test as a potential decision you want to make. When you frame your objective as a decision, it helps to keep your head clear, focus on this one desired outcome, and most importantly, know when to stop, since if you're confident enough to make a decision, then you've reached the objective of the test.
Testing your prototype is essential to ensure it meets your objectives, metrics, and resources. Usability testing is a popular method that involves observing and recording user interactions with the prototype, and asking questions about their experience. This can be done in person or remotely, with tools like Zoom, UserTesting, or Lookback. A/B testing is another method that compares two versions of the prototype and measures which one performs better on a given metric. This can be done online with tools like Optimizely, Google Optimize, or Unbounce. Lastly, feedback sessions are a great way to present the prototype to a group of users and get their opinions, suggestions, or questions. This can be done in person or remotely, with tools like Miro, Figma, or InVision.
Depending on your prototype fidelity, you could be ready to get your product in the hands of your audience in real environments. Beta testing is a great method for testing with real people in real places, over a period of time to validate that you have a good product market fit, strong UX, and reliable software. While many teams will use a hodgepodge of tools like spreadsheets and surveys, aiming for a dedicated tool that handles beta testing will likely save you time and effort. Centercode offers a free beta test management platform for those looking to run a beta program.
Amplitude Experiment is another great tool for multivariate testing. It also includes tools for easy analysis, confidence levels, and data comparison.
After you have tested your prototype, it is essential to analyze the results and use them to improve your product concept. To do this, you must first collect and organize the data from your test, such as recordings, notes, surveys, ratings, or feedback, and categorize them into positive, negative, or neutral. Then, you must identify patterns and insights by searching for common themes, trends, or issues in the data. Ask yourself questions such as: what worked well, what didn't work well, what surprised you, what confused you, what can you improve, or what can you learn. Finally, prioritize and implement the changes that have the most impact on your product idea, based on your insights, and test them again. Prototyping and testing are cyclical processes that help you refine your product idea and make it more user-friendly. By following the best practices for prototyping and testing new product ideas, you can increase your chances of creating a successful product that meets your users' needs and expectations.
I'd add to this point that you should not only analyze the results, but you should also share the results afterward since the value of your experiments is not only in the learnings and the decisions that you've going to make based on it but also in the contributing to better team knowledge about their product and their user. So after you're done analyzing, it helps to make a couple of quick slides with the key learnings and the decisions and share it internally with the team.