Many individuals often misunderstand what a product prototype entails, especially those new to the field of designing a product.
Product prototyping is the one thing you cannot skip when developing a new idea.
By why is it so important?
And why should you never skip it?
Prototyping depends on a few factors:
- What type of product idea is being designed.
- Your goals for designing it.
- And required level of complexity/fidelity.
If you are new to developing a product, this article will show you the value of a product prototype, and why you cannot skip it.
Prototyping your idea is the only way you can build a great product.
Prototyping your product idea will save you time
It’s very easy to get caught in the trap of looking at a beautiful digital render of your idea through a screen and convincing yourself everything looks great and there will be no issues.
There has never, ever, been a time in my career where a prototype has not taught us something valuable.
Any new product idea myself or our clients develop, we always learn something from prototyping. And it’s usually profound information. Especially if it’s the first product prototype of a new product.
Yes, prototyping your idea, will take another 3 weeks of valuable time and an extra $2500 of your money. Which can seem counterintuitive to saving you time and money. But the lessons you learn for this prototype could help you save money in moulding, assembly, usability which all have a substantial ROI when you go to market.
Discovering a part that needs to change after the $50 000 moulds are already manufactured. It’s going to hurt. You’re going to wish you took the time and spent the money to test all your assumptions before heading to production.
Taking the time to prototype your idea, is vital to saving time and money down the line.
Hidden stories are told in a product prototype
Spinning a digital 3D model around on the computer and assessing how it will feel in your hand. Is not how you design a product that is ergonomic.
You have to prototype the product idea, place it in your hand, then analyse, revise, and repeat the design process.
This is the obvious reason we create a product prototype.
Testing.
But it’s not the full story….
We are more interested in the stories we don’t know yet and are not obvious.
- The story that comes to us when we have the prototype in our hand.
- The story about the forgotten feature which we have neglected, that we thought wouldn’t matter.
- The story of the unnecessary feature, that we thought would matter.
- The story we only figured out in a real-life situation with the product prototype.
These are the stories that turn a good product idea. Into a great product.
Product Prototyping helps you understand function.
One of the more obvious reasons you prototype a product is to understand its functionality in the real world.
Depending on your product idea, the function can vary from idea to idea.
If it’s a simple enclosure, with one PCB and a few ports. You want to assess how you handle the product, connect the connections, turn on the power button, fit it into the place, etc. Making sure the product works as intended.
If it’s something more complicated like a new tennis club handle that reduces fatigue when playing for over 2 hours. That idea requires extensive prototyping and testing to validate it’s primary function.
Testing your products function is like humans needing oxygen, water and shelter.
It’s the basic ingredients your product needs to survive in the wild.
What does it NEED to do,
TEST it’s do do,
does it DO the do?
Test your materials through product prototyping and samples.
Depending on what stage you are at in developing your product, or what your product idea is meant to do.
Material selection can have a massive impact on your customers experience.
If your product idea relies heavily on the touch and feel of your product. You have to actually prototype the product and test the materials.
How does the product prototype feel in your hands, your feet, on your body, on your dog.
How does product prototype interact with you and the environment,
Can the product prototype be cleaned easily? Is it suitable for the washing machine, is it hygienic enough for a hospital?
You can’t replace having the product prototype or sample materials with you in real life. There is nothing to replace the feeling of a physical sample (Sorry VR, you’re not that good yet).
Even if it’s too expensive to prototype the actual product in the real material. Getting samples of what materials, you want to use, and getting to know how they feel will help you understand the material properties, which will help you design a better product.
If you can, build a product prototype in the production materials to help get a feeling for the feeling.
Understand form and scale of your product idea
Looking at a digital 3D model on a flat computer screen, or printed picture is not to scale.
Whether your product is a large aluminium canopy, a desktop monitor stand, or a plastic toy.
There are methods to prototype your product and validate all of the scale assumptions made when developing your product.
Using a 1:1 cardboard model to build out sections of your aluminium canopy and monitor stand can help you interact you’re the size of your product idea. It doesn’t have to look pretty; it just needs to show you the real-life scale and form so you can wrap your head around the size of the product.
A plastic toy can easily be 3D printed on a cheap FDM 3D printer to allow you to hold it in your hand. Even if it doesn’t function, it still brings you information about the form and scale.
Making sure you understand scale and form of your product will help you understand how your idea fits into real life.
Test your product idea with your potential customer
Any of these previously mentioned types of product prototypes can help you gauge interest with your potential customer.
Test a ‘dummy’ scale model of your monitor stand with a potential customer, ask them for feedback.
Take a working toy prototype to your friend who has 3 boys that are not interested in anything other than fighting each other and building tree houses. How do they interact with your toy product prototype?
Show a picture of your beautifully designed new barbeque to your barbequing obsessed father in-law, what are their first thoughts?
Learn from the interactions
Building a prototype can be straight forward. Testing and engaging with your potential customer is how you get the most value from building your product prototype.
Start with your friends and family, but ultimately you want to test it with potential customers that don’t know you.
Test your product idea, even if it makes you feel uncomfortable, it will help you build a better product.
Product prototyping helps you understand assembly
While you build your prototypes. You have to assembly the parts together. This brings an opportunity to learn how the different parts are assembling and interacting together.
- Can this part fit through here,
- this part needs to be screwed together before it can be bolted onto the end,
- These parts have to go together first.
- Etc.
Use it as a test run on how the final assembly could go.
Reducing complexity in assembly is how you can bring the manufacture costs down when you get to production.
Most people do not manufacture and assemble their ideas. Production factories will charge you for each step required for manufacturing and assembling your product.
- By making the assembly easier,
- you make their life easy,
- which brings down the cost,
- while decreasing assembly faults,
- which decreases returns
- and increases your profits.
- It’s a boring, but highly beneficial thing to think about.
Building a product prototype to think about assembly and reduce steps can help you save money.
The final prototype before you go to production.
Testing your product idea and how all the final parts fit together is one of the last things you should be doing. This is a vital step in signing off the detailed design and engineering of your product.
- You’ve made sure the scale is working.
- Your product is functioning as it should.
- You’ve learnt about a few blind spots.
- You are happy with the materials.
- You’ve even tested it out with some customers.
Now comes one of the last tests. Making sure the product fits together perfectly with all the final components and is ready for mass production.
The goal here is to build your ‘golden sample’
This is the prototype that is 99.5% the same as your final product. It’s the sample you and your manufacturer agree is what your customers will receive. And whenever there is an issue with a product from your customer, it’s the sample you can refer back to when your manufacturer’s quality control is not on par.
It’s the final prototype which dot’s the I’s and crosses the T’s.
It gives you the relaxation to go to production and you know it’s going to work.
And gives the manufacturer the expectations of what needs to be achieved.
