Prototyping in product management

Prototyping in product management: 3 forms of prototyping for non-designers

Is prototyping giving you a headache? It's not as complicated as you think! Follow our tips and just get started. Prototyping is a valuable method that you should also use. Even as a non-designer in product management, you should be able to visualize ideas. These visualizations are essential for fleshing out your ideas and presenting them to your customers. Prototyping helps to clarify the requirements for a product, identify potential problems at an early stage and test them during development.

#1 Visualize your idea on paper

The first step in prototyping often begins with traditional methods: Pen and paper, i.e. sketching or paper prototyping. Low-fidelity prototypes are created from simple materials such as paper, pencil and glue and are inexpensive and time-efficient. Your idea, your concept, is sketched out so that it exists not only in your head but also on paper. These sketches provide a visual representation of your ideas. It's not about aesthetic perfection or absolute accuracy, but about creating thinking aids and communication tools. Paper prototyping is the link between getting your idea from your head to your hand and onto paper. An iPad can also be helpful here. There are simple apps that can be used to take photos of sketches and merge them into a prototype. You can carry out initial tests with paper prototypes, sketches and simple apps. Of course, they have their limitations and such prototypes are not always suitable for presentation to the customer. There are advanced forms of prototyping for this.

#2 Use presentation tools for appealing digital prototypes

There are numerous tools that you can use to prototype digitally. A digital prototype should be able to speak for itself. PowerPoint, Keynote or Google Slides are often used. These presentation tools are ideal for creating quick yet attractive prototypes. It requires a little more effort than paper prototyping, but offers advantages. You can make the prototype more interactive and illustrate your ideas on different slides. This gives the customer a better understanding of how the product works. With digital prototyping, you can also work with text. Lorem Ipsum, a placeholder text, is often used in prototypes to show the visual design. In some cases, simple text fields are enough to indicate that text should be placed here. Another advantage of digital prototypes is that they can be used to gather feedback from users or customers. This feedback helps to avoid misunderstandings and improve the product in line with expectations.

#3 Use specialized tools to increase interactivity

Two favorite specialized tools are Marvel and InVision. Both offer numerous functions. You can upload images and place hotspots, i.e. click or tab areas, on them to demonstrate how the product works. This allows you to create more complex prototypes with branches that the customer can test. You can also export ideas that you have visualized in PowerPoint or Keynote as images and load them into these tools. This increases interactivity and gives your project more vitality and reality. You can gain new insights through concrete application.

When is which prototype appropriate in the product life cycle?

Ideally, it should be a completely new product, but this is rare. Sketching should always be part of your working method, as it is more like thinking by hand than prototyping in the narrower sense. The objective of the prototyping also plays a role. Is it about small or significant changes? Sometimes three slides in Keynote are enough to illustrate the situation before, during and after. For more complex changes, tools such as InVision are more suitable. The designer toolbox is much more accessible today than it was a few years ago and is also easier to use for non-designers.

Make something real that does not yet exist

The aim of prototyping is to create something that does not yet exist. Rapid prototyping uses technologies such as 3D printing to quickly create physical models and test them. In product management, we rely on digital tools to create prototypes quickly. Take out as many steps as possible to make the process as straightforward as possible. That is the power of prototyping: you get very far very quickly, even if the prototype is later discarded. In the prototyping process, you acquire knowledge and can test things that don't yet exist. The faster you get there, the better.

Short and sweet: The prototyping process

The simple drawing, the paper prototype, should be the start of your prototyping process. In software development, creating prototypes offers many advantages, such as the opportunity to receive feedback and make adjustments at an early stage. Your ideas are presented visually. You can then move on to the digital prototype and use simple tools such as PowerPoint, Keynote or Google Slides. At this stage, the prototype should already speak for itself. In the final step, specialized tools such as Marvel or InVision are added to achieve interactivity, vitality and reality.

Our tip for you: Make it easy for yourself!

A very good way to use tools like Marvel and InVision is to take screenshots of the existing app and overlay changes on top. UX design plays a crucial role in creating realistic prototypes and gathering valuable customer feedback. Use Photoshop, Sketch or PowerPoint to add boxes to the areas to be replaced, in which the new text is written. This allows you to quickly and easily create a prototype of the new version with all the details already prefabricated.

We hope we were able to help you. We are interested in your experiences and anecdotes as a non-designer in prototyping. How do you overcome challenges? Tell us your stories, tips and tricks that you have gathered while creating a prototype.

‍