Innovative design is a constantly evolving process that aims to explore improved user solutions. For the manufacturing companies intended at designing products that perfectly fulfill the users and target market, the path is never easy. This journey typically travels from idea to design. Here comes the vital phase of Prototyping.
Still, have you been interested in prototyping in design thinking? Though this world has become digitized, the struggle to realise ideas remains the same. With innovative ideas booming, the need for effective prototype development increases. Prototyping in design thinking emerges as a beacon and caters to it as a key to driving success.
Prototype – An essential step in design thinking
Prototyping, the earlier product version is the typical process of transferring the ideas or concepts to realities in the physical world. Whenever you aim at building successful products, you just can’t quickly make the way from idea creation to product manufacturing. Instead, it is essential that you validate your idea, test its feasibility and gain feedback from users and stakeholders, finally ensuring whether the idea is worth developing.
Getting your unique prototype from a reliable product designing company empowers the designing team to visualise their idea and test them with real users.
Design thinking is a human-centred methodology that focuses on solving problems. What’s the role of prototyping in designing products here?
Prototyping serves as a bridge between conception and product.
Purpose of Prototyping in design thinking
Through design thinking, you get a solution-based approach to problem-solving. This phase helps in understanding the needs of users, looking into the problem via the human’s perception and ending up with numerous ideas to derive an effective solution. They need a practical approach to test the ideas and this is the role of prototyping in design thinking.
Let us see the stages of typical design thinking:
- Researching ideas
- Define the needs and problems
- Ideate
- Prototype – creating the solution
- Test
Here the 4th stage Prototype in design thinking helps in identifying the best possible solution for your innovative idea.
This prototype development represents the idea of the engineering/product development team. Design thinking prototypes can be physical or virtual prototypes.
The major purpose of a prototype in design thinking is to visualise and represent the ideas.
Also, this crucial process is helpful in:
- Build a working version of the product, i.e. a prototype, and test it with target users and stakeholders. This helps in identifying whether the product truly serves as the answer to the problems of its consumers.
- At the end of the creation of a prototype, the designing team will be equipped with a better idea of the limitations and the bottlenecks of the product related to mass-scale production.
- This helps in gaining a clear view of how the real users respond to the use of products, their thoughts and their interaction with the product.
- Taking the concept from idea to reality makes your ideas strong and enables reaching the users as tangible solutions.
- Communicating the ideas as visual representations in the form of prototypes enables the design team to get initial feedback from stakeholders.
- There can be risks that certain ideas can become ineffective in the real Prototyping in design thinking reduces such risks, as you can test the idea among potential users.
Importance of prototype in design thinking
- To visualise and communicate your idea
Prototyping caters to a tangible representation of the concept of the design team. Since you can serve a visual presentation of your idea, you can:
- Get a clear idea of the functionality and features of the product
- Rather than merely explaining your idea to the stakeholders in words, prototypes help in visualizing and easily understanding your concept.
- Check feasibility
Since with the help of prototypes, you can practically implement the idea, you can check for its technical feasibility. Moreover, as you create a prototype, you become aware of the challenges while manufacturing the actual product.
Prototyping in Design Thinking enables the design team to identify the unpredictable limitations related to technical, physical, and financial aspects of the product.
- Improves the quality of the product
Prototype stages help in designing an improved quality of a product. Prototypes undergo various performance tests. These iterations help in fine-tuning the functionalities, performance and usability of the product.
As you can obtain feedback from users and stakeholders, prototypes can be refined and improved. The various iterations, feedback and modifications ensure the improvement of the overall quality of the product.
- Reduces development costs
As prototypes in design thinking help with early problem identification, you can address and avoid potential issues, ultimately saving yourself from costly mistakes. As you fine-tune the idea in the early stages and come up with an optimal design, resource optimization can be achieved. Thus, you can save on overall development expenditures related to product manufacturing.
- Reduces the risks
If your project involves prototypes in design thinking, you can stay relaxed. This is because; you are less risky and reduce the possibilities of uncertainty. Validating your concepts, from idea to prototype, minimizes the risks. As you get valuable feedback from target users and stakeholders in the early stages, the design team can make informed decisions that drive success in launching the product.
- Early market validation
Ensuring that your idea meets the target market is important for product development. Cost-effective prototype development is a minimalist approach to how your idea works in the intended market and resonates with potential users.
How does prototyping work? A case study:
Let us consider that you design a product that solves a particular problem of the users. You probably know your target people and hence you design the product with intended features and functionalities. You launch the product to the market. But, here you come to know that your product fails to resonate with the users. What will happen? All your efforts and resources will be in vain.
Imagine the same with a prototype. You create a single or fewer versions of the prototypes that represent the product. You test it among target people and discover the issues before reaching the final production.
Ultimately, prototyping in design thinking is the very safer approach to designing a product that perfectly meets the customer’s demands.
In conclusion:
It is never a recommended thing to create products based on assumptions or biases. Prototyping in the design thinking stages allows testing ideas quickly and effectively, getting valuable feedback, and iterating towards a winning product. Validate your ideas with a more customer-centric approach, including prototype development in your product design.