A guide to rapid prototyping: Benefits, processes, and best practices

When product teams are looking to build a new product or feature, prototyping is one of the least risky ways to explore and validate their ideas with users. This concept is known as rapid prototyping—a design process that helps teams test product ideas quickly.

In this article, we explore what rapid prototyping means and best practices for getting the most out of it. And to get an understanding of the benefits rapid prototyping offers product teams, we sat down with Tulio Domingos, Product Manager at Glovo, to get his view on why prototyping is important.

Rapid prototyping is a design workflow that includes prototyping and testing a design solution with users and stakeholders to help designers and product teams refine and validate ideas quickly.

The main goal of rapid prototyping is to get effective insights and user feedback early, refining the design until it meets all user requirements and needs.

The rapid prototyping process includes three steps: prototyping, testing, and refining. Designers go through these stages in order, improving their solutions based on the prototype testing results and the feedback they received from users. The process occurs iteratively: new ideas are tested and improved upon until the final product is ready for development.

Rapid prototyping is an essential part of the user interface design process. It allows designers and product managers to test new concepts and theories with users and create a final solution that has been validated before handoff. Instead of waiting until launch to find out if a new product or feature performs well, rapid prototyping enables product teams to get the insights they need earlier in the process.

Let’s now look at three benefits to making rapid prototyping part of your design process.

Rapid prototyping is one of the most effective ways to quickly explore the concepts and ideas that you and your team come up with. Perhaps someone on the team noticed a trend through research, or maybe you want to refine a feature based on customer feedback. Whatever the idea is, use rapid prototyping to explore possible solutions and quickly understand if that idea is a go or not.

Rapid prototyping also helps to answer the question of whether a new product is valuable to users. For instance, when the product team at Maze started receiving requests for duplicating projects, we tested whether this solution would offer our customers any value by exploring the concept with our Customer Advisory Board.

If a product is valuable to users and provides a good user experience, they’ll want to use it. Quickly prototyping potential new features and asking your customers for feedback are great ways to explore new concepts without investing too much time into developing a finished product.

Another benefit of rapid prototyping is that it allows product teams to minimize the need for iterations in the live product, significantly reducing development-related costs. When a feature or product has been validated with users at the design stage, the risk of building something that doesn't work or isn't valuable is minimal.

As the famous design quote from Dr. Ralf Speth says, "If you think good design is expensive, you should look at the cost of bad design." Research has found that the cost of fixing an issue after release can be four to five times as more than during product design. In that respect, prototyping a solution and testing it with users is a lot less costly than developing a fully-fledged product and blindly releasing it to the world.

Last but not least, rapid prototyping is one of the key ingredients of successfully launching a product. There are immense benefits to including users in the product development process, from building an engaged community to identifying proponent customers.

For example, before Freetrade officially launched their mobile app to the App Store, they already had a 20,000 customer waiting list. Their community had been an integral part of the development process since the early stages, and the Freetrade team regularly contacted their users for testing and feedback. The result? A successful launch day with an already existing customer base.

Now that we went through the benefits of rapid prototyping, it's time to build a prototype and start testing. Let's look at a few types of prototypes you can create and how to get started.

In digital design, a prototype is a simulation of an interaction between the interface and the user. You can prototype almost everything in a user interface, starting with a simple interaction and up to a complete representation of the product.

The simplest way to start prototyping is to use pen and paper and create what's known as a paper prototype. This type of prototype is usually referred to as a low-fidelity prototype because of its minimal level of interactivity, visuals, and content.

Low-fidelity prototyping is a quick and easy way to turn high-level design concepts into testable artifacts. The goal is to validate the product's underlying assumptions and core value and check its functionality rather than its aesthetics.

Low-fidelity prototypes are great for ideation and ruling out multiple solutions at the earliest stage of the design process. Testing wireframes can help you identify the most effective layout of a screen, the user flow, or the best way to present information to users.

Tree testing is a great way to validate the ease of finding items in your product structure. Read more.

As you move through the design process, start adding more components such as visuals, copy, or interactions to create a medium or high-fidelity prototype. High-fidelity prototypes are highly functional and interactive. They are best for testing during the latest stages of the design process when you want your customers to feel and interact with a prototype that feels as close to the final product as possible.

Designers usually create high-fidelity prototypes to validate the final design and uncover any usability issues before starting development. One of the main benefits of high-fidelity prototypes is that you can test specific design elements and interactions and get more accurate feedback. This type of prototype also gives your stakeholders a clear idea of how the product will look and work before it goes live.

Want to get actionable insights quickly and remotely? Discover more about remote usability testing.

Rapid prototyping is valuable at all stages of the product development process. Let's take a look at some common use cases:

There are a few best practices to keep in mind to ensure you get the most out of rapid prototyping. In this section, we explore those best practices and how you can implement them into your workflow.

Rapid prototyping is an effective process for building a great product. The feedback you get from users during the product development stage is one of the most significant prototyping and early testing benefits. So next time you struggle with a product idea or want to validate a design concept, try building a prototype and testing it with users—it's guaranteed to reveal at least a few actionable insights.