Benefits of Prototyping in Product Development

How a $3 cardboard mockup prevented a 3-month schedule delay. (a fake story with a real lesson) A design team had been designing a new assembly line layout for months. CAD models, workflow simulations, ergonomic studies, virtual reality models - everything looked perfect on the computer The client approved the design. Equipment vendors were ready to build. Then the rookie designer suggested something that seemed ridiculous: "Let's build this out of cardboard first." The sourcing team rolled their eyes. They were going to miss the order window. They would have to re-quote. But the engineer spent a Saturday afternoon with cardboard, tape, and measuring tape. Monday morning, within two hours of walking through the cardboard layout, the 'operators' found five critical problems. The parts bins were too far from the assembly station. Workers would be walking 30 extra steps per cycle. The quality inspection station blocked the main workflow and created a bottleneck. The tool changeover required reaching across the aisle during operation. talk about a safety nightmare.. Their beautiful CAD model assumed perfect spacing, but real humans with safety equipment need more room. The cardboard mockup revealed what months of digital modeling missed - how the layout actually feels to use. They redesigned on the spot, moving cardboard boxes around until the flow felt right. The purchasing team was relieved, as the $200,000 order was de-risked. The final installation worked flawlessly on day one. No expensive equipment relocations. No workflow disasters. No worker complaints. Sometimes a few hours with cardboard teaches you more than months with CAD. Sometimes physical #prototypes have a feel that screens and AR can't capture. How are you testing your ideas? Are you waiting until you have the design 'done' to order the samples? Prototyping is learning. Learn faster by building. #manufacturing #design #prototyping #designthinking and below is a chatgpt representation of this story 🤓

Product development in 2024 - the old way: • Design low-fi wireframes to align on structure • Create pixel-perfect Figma mockups • Socialize designs with stakeholders • Wait weeks for engineering capacity to build • Build core functionality first • Push "nice-to-have" animations to v2 • Ship v1 without thoughtful interactions • Iterate based on limited feedback • Repeat the cycle for 3-6 months Product development in 2025: • Quickly prototype in code with AI tools like Bolt • Generate functional prototypes in hours, not days • Deploy to real URLs for immediate testing • Add analytics to track actual usage patterns • Test with users while still in development • Designers directly create interaction details • Engineers implement interaction details by copying working code • Ship v1 with thoughtful animations and transitions • Iterate rapidly based on both qualitative and quantitative data • Implement improvements within days Last week, we hosted William Newton from Amplitude to share how this shift is fundamentally changing their product development approach. "I made those interaction details myself. I made those components myself, and I sent them to my engineer and he copied and pasted them in." Features that would have been pushed to "future versions" are now included in initial releases. Loading animations, transition states, and micro-interactions that improve user confidence—all shipped in v1. This approach doesn't eliminate the need for thoughtful design and engineering. Instead, it changes the order of operations: - Traditional process: Perfect the design → Build the code → Ship → Learn - Emerging process: Prototype in code → Learn while building → Ship with polish → Continue learning The limiting factor is shifting from technical implementation to your taste and judgment about what makes a great experience. When designers and PMs can participate directly in the creation process using the actual medium (code), they make different—often better—decisions about what truly matters.

Ever noticed how we talk about prototyping but rarely actually do it? 🤔 I get it – I've been there. It feels safer to plan exhaustively than to put something imperfect into the world. But here's what I've learned: Perfect plans fail perfectly. Imperfect prototypes teach perfectly. We've become professional excuse-manufacturers: "The tool isn't ready" "We need more confidence before showing anything to users" "Let me schedule another alignment meeting" Most ideas live in static documents, but what if we built living artifacts instead? The shift from "planning products" to "evolving prototypes" has compressed my time-to-insight by 80%. This is what I teach and how I do it: -» Select Problem → Choose something worth solving with AI -» Explore Problem Space → Research just enough to move forward -» Initial Requirements → Define the bare minimum to build v0 -» Prototype → Build something tangible (even if imperfect) -» Iterate → The magic happens in this loop! -» Connect APIs → Make it talk to real data. 🔑 Key: (Add a form / PostHog analytics) -» Share & Feedback → Create that virtuous cycle Last week at PMTeach with Nabeel, and at USF with Product Club | University of San Francisco, we demonstrated this approach—building clones of familiar apps and net-new «connected!» prototypes in minutes, not weeks. The students' eyes widened watching ideas transform from concepts to interactive experiences they could actually touch, share, and learn from. What changes when you work this way? Everything. Engineers respect PMs who can visualize solutions. Stakeholders give better feedback on working prototypes than documents. And you? You rediscover the joy of creating that likely drew you to product work initially. Really. Try. Tools like v0, Replit, and Loveable have democratized this creation process. We're bringing prototype-building directly into Zentrik soon too, because I believe every product decision should be testable, not just discussable. ---- For the curious, I'm happy to share my two default prompts that power this workflow. Would you be interested in trying a weekly prototype cycle? And if you're already a v0/Replit master, I'd love to chat as we refine our approach.

"The value of a prototype is in the insight it imparts, not the code" Prototyping lets us fail fast and cheap, or get the data to make a concrete decision on direction. It helps answer the question, "What happens if we try this?". Most significantly, prototyping provides us with the guardrails to safely and productively fail. Prototyping is the right tool if you have an idea to validate, a clear path to get feedback on, or a proposal requiring further data. It provides crucial insights to move forward. By creating a rough version of a feature or system you've been considering, you gain the flexibility to either discard the idea or fully commit to it. It's a skill that assists product and engineering teams in making pivotal business decisions. Whether it's a website, mobile app, or landing page, no matter what product you're working on, it's always essential to verify your design decisions before shipping them to the end-users. Some development teams delay the validation stage until they have a solution that is almost complete. But that's an extremely risky strategy. As we all know, the later we come across the problem, the more costly it becomes to fix it. Luckily, no matter what point you are in the design process, it is still possible to build and test a concrete image of your concept—a prototype. Consider an architect tasked with designing a grand building. Before laying the first stone, the architect crafts a miniature scale model, allowing them to visualize the end result, understand the project's complexities, and present their ideas convincingly to others. However, this model is far from being the final product; it's a means to an end. This principle applies just as aptly in the world of software development. A software prototype—whether it's a low-fidelity wireframe, a high-fidelity interactive model, or a simplified mock-up of a more complex system—is much like the architect's scale model. It's a visual, often interactive, model of the software that provides developers, stakeholders, and users with an early glimpse into the software's workings, long before the final product is ready. The prototype isn't about the code per se; the code is merely a tool used to create it. Instead, it is about gathering valuable insights, comprehending user needs, identifying functional requirements, validating technical feasibility, and discovering potential stumbling blocks that might arise during full-scale development. The prototype's strength lies in its capacity to provide these insights without necessitating a significant investment of time or resources. I'm a big fan of using prototypes in our work at Google. Their value is often high. Wrapping up... The aim of prototyping is not the prototype itself or its immediate output but the knowledge that comes from it. I wrote more on this topic in https://lnkd.in/gEEGFwJp #softwareengineering #programming #ux #design

Why do we prototype? Here are five reasons why a live, interactive solution beats a static design mock-up: 1. Non-designers don't speak "mock-up." Static mock-ups imply a lot of things about interactions, data, and dynamic content—but for non-designers, it’s like a foreign language. An interactive prototype bridges that gap. Everyone can get on the same page, seeing the real behavior rather than imagining it. 2. It exposes data surprises early. Your data isn’t always as clean or complete as you think. Prototyping helps uncover these data quirks before they become real problems. Missing values, unexpected trends, confusing fields—better to find these up front. 3. Prototypes validate our assumptions. Designs are built on a lot of hypotheses: What’s important to users? How will they interact? Which views are most useful? Prototypes give us the opportunity to test and validate these assumptions—before they make it to a final product. 4. User feedback smooths out the rough edges. It’s not just about the big features; it’s also the small details. Do users understand the metrics? Are the labels clear? Is the color scheme effective? Prototyping lets us gather that feedback and refine the experience in real-time. 5. It helps build buy-in. Switching from static reports to interactive data applications can be intimidating for some organizations. Prototypes make the leap easier—they let stakeholders experience the solution firsthand, helping to build excitement and a shared vision of what’s possible. At Juice, rapid prototyping is one of our secret weapons for building data stories and data products that connect with users. #datastorytelling #dataproducts