April 15, 2019 // By Magenic
There’s a moment in every product’s lifecycle journey where product owners and stakeholders ask themselves three things: Does the customer want or need this? Should we do this? Can we do this? Prototyping gathers real-time data to iterate products and boost confidence when it’s time to launch. Not only does it make your product better, but when done effectively, prototyping results in positive cultural shifts throughout an organization.
Successful prototyping can result in business, IT, and consumer interest all aligning, speaking the same language, and using the same tools. It serves as an outsider’s perspective, which is a crucial element to seeing all the variables of an idea’s lifecycle and aligning them into a coherent and effective strategy.
We wrote a white paper on the 6 ways prototyping can take the guesswork out of product deliverables – but we’ll dive in to a few of those tips below.
A Form of Storytelling
Prototyping helps you clarify your ideas and bring your product journey to life, especially since people are visual thinkers who like to see ideas in action in order to better understand the purpose behind them. It allows your internal and external teams to find the “Why?” of your proposition and move your idea through development.
Slow Down before Speeding Up
Anytime an organization brings a product to market, it’s impactful. For that impact to be a good thing, it’s important to think through the development stages intentionally and to not rush the process. This is where prototyping can really work its magic – the low cost of quick prototyping compared to development means teams that teams can reduce their project risk early with regular feedback from end-users and stakeholders. Over the lifecycle of the product, that means moving fast toward what will work.
Bringing Departments to The Same Page
A common software development roadblock is when internal and external teams aren’t in alignment. Oftentimes, it’s not that teams aren’t agreeing on a direction, it’s simply that they aren’t using the same language to communicate their ideas. Prototyping forces teams to agree on clearly identified roles among team members, bringing clarity to an organization.
If you’d like to read more ways prototyping can accelerate your speed to market and provide a more effective product strategy, the white paper will provide more insights.
If you’re ready to start implementing prototyping in your organization, give us a call. We offer a Product Design and Prototype Quick Start that can help get you started.