How to Build a Prototype

Bbuild a tangible model of your ideas to try them out

Once ideas have been generated, you need to test them and validate them with stakeholders and end users to make sure you are going in the right direction. Prototypes are a way to transform ideas described on paper into tangible representations that can be shown to others to get feedback.

Prototypes also help to develop your ideas further, understand them better, and communicate and create a common understanding among project members about the ideas to be implemented.

GOAL

Build a prototype of your solution

PARTICIPANTS

Designers, Architects, End-Users

TIME NEEDED

Method-dependent

PHASE

Design

Before You Start

Generate Ideas with Ideation

The prototyping can start once the project team has a good understanding of the current situation, including business goals, current processes, user needs and challenges. See the following guide:

Generate Ideas with Ideation

Materials You Will Need

Resources for Download

[How to] Build a Prototype – Guide (PDF)

Detail Level of Your Prototype

Depending on your project, the stage you are in, and what you want to validate, you might want to create a horizontal or a vertical prototype.

Horizontal prototypes can cover the entire concept of your project but won’t go into details, while vertical prototypes can cover certain functionalities in depth. Horizontal prototypes are more useful during early stages of a project, when it is important to know if the entire idea makes sense. A good example of a horizontal prototype is a storyboard.

Vertical prototypes are very useful during usability test sessions, when you need to know if a certain feature can be found or used by a user as it was intended. An example of a vertical prototype is a click-through screenflow to test the search functionality of an e-commerce site.

Detail Level of your Prototype

Some Techniques for Prototyping

	Role Play Together with your team, play out how the solution would work in a certain situation.
	Storyboards Create a Vision Storyboard about your solution idea.
	Physical Prototype Build a prototype of your proposed product using materials like cardboard and foam board.
	Paper Prototype Sketch out a screenflow of your solution idea with simple pen and paper.
	Digital Prototype Create an interactive digital prototype with tools like Figma, Adobe XD, or others.

Steps

Building a prototype includes several steps. We recommend completing them in one session.

10 minutes

Select the Idea(s) You Will Create a Prototype For

Define the scope of what you are going to build.

Don’t be afraid to show unfinished prototypes. The purpose of prototyping is to test ideas with minimum effort, so you can avoid major changes during design or implementation. Therefore, the time you spend on a prototype should be a lot less than the time spent creating the real solution.

10 - 15 minutes

Determine What You Want to Learn

Think about what aspects of your idea you would like to get feedback about.

Prepare your validation questions in advance in order to know what parts of your solution to prototype.

5 minutes

Choose a Prototype Method

Select a prototype method that fits the level of detail you want for your prototype and that will help you to validate the selected aspects.

Variable, depending on method

Create the Prototype Using the Selected Method

Depending on your chosen method, this activity requires different skills and different actions from your team. For example, you could use the Scenes templates to create a Vision Storyboard.

Variable, depending on method

Gather Feedback and Iterate

Ideally, you should test your solution with real end users and collect their feedback.
Iterate your prototype based on the user feedback until the team is satisfied with the solution.

Be ready to start over. Prototypes are meant to be discarded, so don’t worry if validation indicates that you need to go back to the beginning.

You're Done!

Once your team is happy with the feedback for the prototype, you can proceed to create a more detailed Vision Storyboard, if you have not done so already, and to validate your business model.