The Principles of Learning from Prototypes: 5 Lessons

Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash

Prototypes are a great way to get customer feedback about elements of your proposed innovation before you have to invest a ton of resources in them.

But there is a bit of science to how you draw the lessons a prototype can teach you.

Prototyping is an integral part of the design thinking process. Mocking up a web page, making models, giving customers something that helps them understand what you are trying to accomplish and the like are invaluable as part of a smart innovation program. After all, if you can prove that an idea won’t work when you’ve spent $100 to create a prototype, it’s a lot less painful to go in a different direction than when you’ve spent a million! And don’t fall into the trap of thinking that just because funds are plentiful you don’t need to test your hypotheses before going full on product launch (see disastrous launch of Quibi). So how do we make sure that we are learning the right lessons from our customer tests?

Lesson 1: Believe in the vision but be willing to shift your approach

As Safi Bahcall, the author of a terrific book Loonshots says, the first law of Loonshots is to “expect three deaths.”…