Prototyping Techniques

The various prototyping techniques on offer allow you to create preliminary versions of your new product to test and validate various aspects of its design, functionality, and user experience before you go into mass production.

Product prototypes enable you to check:

• The design and functions: It is possible to hold and use a tangible version or manipulate a digital version of the product allowing you to find and fix design flaws or just make improvements that become clear early on during product development while it is still relatively easy and affordable to do so. The same goes for the product’s functionality, as you can check if it functions correctly and if all components are working together as planned.
• The UX and market feedback: A selection of your potential users can use the prototype and provide feedback on how it is to use and whether they would purchase the product. By doing so you’ll uncover problems with using it, what users like/dislike about it and its price, and get ideas about how to improve the UX and shape.

Essentially, prototyping allows you to start testing and validating everything from your product concept to the performance of individual components and even factors like its color at an early stage during the NPI process resulting in a market-ready product going into mass production. As you can imagine, finding problems after the product has been manufactured is not good for many reasons!