Rapid Prototyping

• 2-8 people
• 7,5 hours
• Practitioners
• Build prototypes

The sequence follows what you bring with you. The underlying pattern stays the same. We start with the question the prototype is meant to answer. We then sketch quickly and in several variants, rather than working one idea out straight away. The sketches become a draft that can be operated. The draft goes into a test, and the test leads to a revision.

That last loop is where the learning happens. Once you have seen how quickly an assumption breaks in front of the first user, you work differently afterwards.

Wireframes, mockups and at least one prototype that can be experienced: clickable on screen, or real hardware with a working interface. No concept paper, no slide deck. Something you can put in front of a colleague the next day who was not in the room.

Both workshops run for a day and have almost the same name. They answer different questions.

Rapid prototyping establishes whether an idea works for the people meant to use it. It is about handling, clarity and usefulness. The prototype can be experienced, but it does not really function.

Experimental prototyping establishes whether something can be built at all. It is about feasibility. The draft executes the basic functions, and looks unfinished while doing so.

The choice depends on what is unclear in your case. If you do not know whether people will cope with it, take rapid prototyping. If you do not know whether it works technically, take the experimental workshop.

You should be able to think visually and get what you have thought onto paper. Drawing in the artistic sense is not the point, boxes and arrows will do. Add to that an eye for observation: a prototype only helps someone who sees what actually happens in a test, not what was supposed to happen.

And a willingness to try an unfamiliar method. You need no prior knowledge of software, design or development.

Projects where it is already settled what the result should look like. The prototype then only confirms what had been decided anyway, and the day is wasted.

The same applies when the certainty is only a feeling. Anyone convinced they know how it must look becomes impatient rather than curious at the first user test. Without a readiness to experiment, the method does not hold.