Prototyping as an engineering and business tool
It is common to build prototypes when you are developing a new product. It might be something you have always done in your company, but have you ever thought about why you are building prototypes? Is it just because your sales and marketing department would like to see the product before it is ready to sell?
Prototypes are a useful design tool. Because with a prototype you can test all kinds of things. To name a few:
Structural integrity.
Visual appearance.
Test if certain requirements have been met.
How much does it cost to manufacture?
Does the customer like the look and feel of the product?
Your reason might depend on the industry you are in, or the kind of product you are developing. Nevertheless, there are usually many good reasons for building prototypes. if you are already building prototypes you are moving in the right direction, but have you given the “why” any thought?
You should ask yourself why, because maybe you could harvest more benefits from it.
The value of prototyping
From a business perspective, prototypes can lower the risk in product development. A prototype is a sanity check on your design. To maximize the value of prototyping you should build a strategy for building prototypes. It can be expensive to build a prototype especially if it is a complex and large machine. As a rule of thumb, it is always good to start small. A prototype doesn’t have to be a full-blown replica of the product, it can be a mockup or a model showing only a detail of the product.
A prototype should have a clear purpose. The purpose for this prototype is usually one of the two:
To run tests.
To show the product to stakeholders.
To have a clear purpose for a prototype means you can optimize the cost and time it takes to build it. It can be tempting to build a prototype for several purposes, but this can be dangerous as it would add complexity to the build of the prototype. It can be done though, but keep in mind that the more goals and purposes you add will also add to design time, build time, design cost, build cost and will also add more complexity increasing the probability for failure.
What is failure in prototyping?
Failure in prototyping doesn’t mean that the tests you execute on the prototype fails. Failure in prototyping means that you didn’t learn anything from building the prototype.
Think about a Civil Engineer who wants to see if his design for a new bridge can withstand a certain load. The engineer builds a scaled prototype of the bridge and runs structural tests, to see if the bridge will hold the load. When the engineer then applies the load and the bridge breaks or fails, they have learned something. The engineer might have learned which load their current design sustains, they have learned where the design is most likely to break. With this new info the engineer can now improve the design, and the prototype has therefore served the purpose successfully.
What is an MVP?
MVP is short for Minimum Viable Product. It is a kind of prototype where you only build the most needed (viable) features into your product. An MVP is usually used for validating the product-market-fit for a new product. Meaning is the customer willing to buy the product if it only has the most necessary features. Chances are if they are not willing to buy the product with the most necessary features, they will neither buy the product if it also has the “nice-to-have” features. Using an MVP to validate the market is a good way to lower the complexity of the project and speeding up the delivery time for the design and prototype build. An MVP is well known in the software world, but it can also be used for hardware.
Conclusion
Prototyping can help you lower the risk in the product development, as you can validate your design.
Prototyping can help you improve your design as you can experiment and test different ideas.
To get the full value out of prototyping, you must find a purpose or goal for your prototype.
Limiting yourself and building a scaled down version or only a detail of your design can help you shorten the time it takes to build the prototype.
An MVP can be useful for testing the market if you are developing a new product.
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