The Role of Prototyping in Software Development

What do Slack, Airbnb, Instagram, and other industry giants have in common? They all started with a simple prototype and evolved into some of the most successful products we know today.

When the founders of Airbnb, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, couldn’t afford to pay rent back in 2007 in San Francisco, they decided to rent out air mattresses in their apartment and provide homemade breakfast in the morning to make ends meet. Needless to say, it was successful. Seeing the attention their idea was getting, they built a simple website prototype to test the idea of people paying to stay in a stranger’s home.?

A simple prototype quickly evolved into a successful web application in 2008. The site was officially launched, and the hotel industry was shocked by this innovative and fresh business model. Airbnb, which now operates worldwide, offers millions of listings in over 220 countries, and guests have checked into Airbnb more than 300 million times.

1. So what is prototyping in software development?

Even if you know what product you want and what it will look like, chances are the development and steps to achieve it are not laid out in every detail. And even if it was, the product requirements are likely to change in the development process to have it address the users’ actual needs based on their feedback.

So how do you know what your users actually need and wish to see? This is where prototyping in software development comes into play. A prototype is a working software model that may not exactly represent the final product and initially has limited functionalities, thus using feedback from your target audience continuously to make changes until the final product is developed that addresses their needs.

Prototyping helps to strategize and solidify each development step, helping both the development team and all stakeholders on the client’s side envision what the product will look like.? By creating a prototype, developers showcase the core functionalities and user interface of the software, giving clients a clearer idea of what to expect.

And most importantly prototyping helps generate quick ideas, test them on target users, get feedback on what works and what does not, and improve, creating a repeated cycle. Generally, It’s a lot easier and more affordable to make fixes at an early stage of development.

There are various types of prototypes and each can help answer one of the following questions below.

• Is your project feasible?- For example, if your idea can be realistically implemented based on any technical constraints and available resources.
• Is your system fast enough? - While prototyping you can measure performance metrics like speed or responsiveness of your product.
• How many entities can be handled?- Prototypes allow you to simulate how the system or product handles various loads.?
• Which UI works better for users?- This helps determine which interface design addresses your user's needs the most and is more convenient.?
• Which of the prototyping approaches works better?- There are two main prototyping approaches used in developing your products.

The first one is throwaway prototyping, where we solely answer the specific questions displayed in this section. This allows simply to validate specific concepts and/or shows users what the requirements may look like. Eventually, the prototype will be discarded rather than becoming part of the final product.

Alternatively, a prototype can be reused as a part of the future product. It’s planned and developed with future integration in mind.

2. How are prototypes created?

To create effective prototypes, software engineers usually follow these steps, including our team at SCD:

• First, identify initial requirements, formulate an initial concept based on the client’s unique requirements, and document them, including both functional and non-functional aspects.
• Develop the initial prototype by defining the technical architecture and selecting the most suitable technology to achieve your goals. At times, however, prototyping itself can be used to help development teams choose a technology, by developing 2-3 prototypes each based on different technologies and then comparing results.
• Build the first prototype and, if needed, introduce it to your target users, testing concepts, functional prototypes, and UI/UX and make quick iterations based on their feedback. Other times prototypes are built to ensure the product’s feasibility and there is no requirement to introduce it to your users.
• Review the results, make refinements and enhance the prototype by continuously testing on users and making new prototypes.
• After the product's usability, performance, and user experience are fully validated, start building the market-entry version.
• Launch the final product and first release it to a small number of users, expand and scale your infrastructure to handle a larger number of users.
• Provide ongoing maintenance and support so your product continues to evolve even after launch.

3. Why is quick prototyping crucial?

Let’s say you have a product idea and are afraid it might become outdated in a year or two, so you need it developed quickly (within realistic and achievable timelines). That’s where quick prototyping steps in. This method involves creating a working product sample in several parts at the initial stage. The development team works hand-in-hand with you to test on your audience quickly, refine fast, and make sure your product hits the market when it’s still relevant. After all, staying ahead of your competition is crucial and no one wants an outdated product. In this case you need to carefully choose your IT product development partner to ensure they can achieve it.

4. What are the benefits of prototyping in software engineering?

Prototyping significantly boosts the success rate of your product launch. As mentioned before, the prototyping process allows you to gather real user feedback early and often. By consistently receiving feedback at this early stage, software developers can prioritize the most essential elements, implement necessary changes, and address usability, performance, UX issues, etc.

5. What are the main advantages of prototyping in IT product development specifically?

• Clients get an idea of what the partial product will look like early in the development life cycle.?
• If your product is actually non-feasible, you save costs.
• Target users give informative feedback on your product. Early feedback ensures your product will meet user needs and expectations.
• The risk of failure of product launch is lower due to continuous testing.
• Improvements are made quickly and effectively.
• Clients get to test new ideas in the process and validate them.
• Missing functionalities can be easily added to your product.
• A prototype is an easy way to experiment and express different ideas.

6. What are the challenges in software prototype development?

Prototyping still takes a lot of effort, time and requires resources to build effectively. For that reason, the following constraints might arise that you should be aware of.

• If you have strict budget limitations, prototyping can seem costly to you which can result in inefficient testing of the idea or approach, even causing greater expenses at a later stage.?
• If you want your product launched in an unrealistic deadline then prototypes cannot be built effectively as required.
• Based on the complexity of the product, the development team might need to build multiple prototypes of various aspects of the system, test them individually, requiring a high level of expertise and efficient resource allocation.
• Gathering user feedback is important, but getting meaningful feedback is far more crucial and hard. It’s one thing to get reviews from your users and receive actual reviews that can help improve your product for the better.

7. Why should you choose a tech partner that knows how to effectively build prototypes?

Prototype development is ideal for everyone who wants to validate their ideas quickly and hit the market with their product when its demand is at its highest. That’s why having a tech partner that understands the importance of launching your product with maximum efficient resource allocation and on time is crucial.

If you’re a Startup you might need to show potential investors what your product will look like before the full-scale development has begun. Likewise, you might start having demos with potential users before the product is even out. If you’re just starting any business, prototyping will help you understand your user needs and test them quickly.

If you’re an SME or an Enterprise looking to expand your solutions with minimal risk, you can also benefit from prototyping. It can help you test product ideas on already existing or new users to stay ahead of your competition or expand service offers.

8. From prototype to a successful final product- project example from SCD?

Years ago we were contacted by an international medical company when they had a complex challenge but required tech expertise to address it. The company needed to receive meaningful insights from their 3D medical images and to accurately identify organ placement boundaries.?

The process when performed manually is too time consuming and can lead to errors, so we had to find a way to automate it. Our software engineers had to perform extensive research, cooperate with industry professionals to find a solution. The process began by building functional prototypes until a final solution was achieved.

Here’s a brief on how we achieved a successful outcome for our client: from prototype to a final solution:

• First, we began with a dataset analysis they could provide.
• Next up, we had to analyze the existing approaches to such solutions in the image recognition field, so we reviewed scientific articles for image recognition and cooperated with a specialized research institute.
• We tested promising approaches and implemented a working prototype that met the required parameters in just three weeks.
• We preprocessed and post-processed data using methods of discrete mathematics and graph operations.
• Once the main risks were removed, we developed the first version of the full-fledged product in just 3 months. The first version of the product was built using neural networks.?
• In the end, we successfully developed a custom 3D Image processing solution that successfully converts raw 3D models into semantically meaningful data and allows medical professionals to interact with these models in 3D space.

9. What is the future of prototyping?

Tech advancements are happening every day and it seems almost impossible to try to keep up with all the changes. With that said, many innovative methods of prototyping are emerging and are expected to become trends in the near future.?

• Virtual Reality Prototyping: Though still relatively new, developers and designers are using VR prototypes to showcase what products will look like in an interactive 3D environment. Some industries that are already benefiting from this are healthcare ( creating training simulations, medical procedure simulations, etc.), construction (test virtual building designs), gaming (virtual world simulations), retail (viewing 3D product catalogs, trying on outfits, etc.). And we can only expect the use cases to expand.

• AI in Prototyping: AI-powered prototyping will help software engineers reduce manual work by automating actions such as analyzing user feedback, generating various options, or helping provide intelligent recommendations to enhance the product.

• Automated prototyping: Prototyping is a complex process so automated prototyping is used in less complex projects where developers can create functional prototypes based on detailed predefined rules and templates.

Wrapping Up

Prototyping is an essential step in the software development process so clients have a clear path from concept to product. Prototyping helps to validate product ideas early thanks to user feedback-based improvements, minimizing the risk of failure and maximizing the product’s potential for success.

Anyone, from startups seeking to attract investors or an established enterprise looking to expand their service offers can benefit from prototyping services to remain competitive in the market and launch their products when they are most in demand. By choosing the right tech partner and embracing the benefits of prototyping.

Ready to learn more? Check out our IT Product Development Service page, where we discuss the steps needed to take to organize and launch your products.?