The Most Common Ways to Prototype

The Most Common Ways to Prototype
  • Opening Intro -

    Prototyping is a highly useful part of designing a product for consumers because it allows you to work out any issues before making it available to them.

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You can quickly and easily adjust how users will interact with a product, as well as change components of physical products to remove flaws that hinder their function. Using prototypes also means that you reduce waste because you don’t need to commit the actual materials that you will use in the final product to the prototypes since they do not need to be fully functional at that early stage.

So what prototyping method is right for your business? You may use one or a combination of the most common ways to prototype that we share.

Sketching

At the very beginning of your product development process, you may select sketching as a convenient technique for prototyping.

All you need are some sheets of paper and a few writing utensils.

While sketching, you draw out what the product will look like once completed, highlight key features that aren’t evident from just its appearance, and show how users interact with it through diagrams and notes.

You can create visual maps that show connections between concepts within the design as well.

Sketching is well-suited to group collaboration, where multiple people can input their ideas and spot potential issues before moving on to later steps.

Often, the goal of sketching is to define the main aspects of the product while working out more specific details later.

Storyboarding

You might think of storyboarding as a technique reserved only for those who make movies or television shows, but it is also one of the most common ways to prototype for businesses in general.

The reason for this is because drawing up stories or progressions about how someone would interact with a product helps you to think from their perspective.

Are there facets of the design that aren’t intuitive or that a consumer would have trouble understanding? Perhaps there are flaws that could hurt their satisfaction with the product, even though it technically functions adequately.

By drawing up storyboards, you can discover these points and fine-tune your product accordingly so that you can maximize customers’ satisfaction with it.

3D Printing

If the goods you want to make and sell are tangible, 3D printing is a method that lets you create models of your product that you can touch, manipulate, and examine from every angle.

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A printer can make models of simple items such as cups, or individual pieces that will compose a greater whole in products with moving parts. With these kinds of items, it may be best to fully see what the product will look like before you begin full-scale manufacturing, as some problem areas may not be apparent on paper.

Take mechanical systems, for example. Within a machine, each part must fit seamlessly with the others for everything to work without issue. Your initial prototype design might slightly falter from the specific edge angle or size that you need it to be, and 3D printing a model can allow you to see that.

You can rapidly go through multiple iterations of a product, with minute but important modifications to each, until you arrive at the best design.

Image Credit: common ways to prototype by envato.com

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