Insights & Strategy

Design Insights

Engineering

Prototype Development

<p>In product development, we’ve all heard or used the phrase “smoke and mirrors” when referring to prototyping. I’ve always known what it means, but I’m a little embarrassed to say I never knew the origin of the phrase until recently. It refers to the technique magicians use to distract an audience with a burst of smoke, and then make things seem to appear or disappear with the clever use of mirrors. Go figure.</p>

<p>Nothing can replace having a prototype in your hands. We offer a range of services to help your product take shape.</p>

Services: Prototype Development at Delve (text only)

<p>This phrase has a negative connotation—essentially it means being fraudulent or deceptive. And despite its frequent use in regard to mocking up an idea (i.e. prototyping), I don’t think it applies.</p>

<h2>Rapid Prototyping: It’s No Illusion</h2>
<p>At Delve, clients often commission us to rapidly (magically!) develop sophisticated prototypes as part of the product development process. Clients use these prototypes in a variety of ways: at trade shows to generate buzz; for gathering customer feedback; and most frequently, to conduct user research (often in the form of usability testing). For medical products, human factors research may be a requirement—or at least a <a href="http://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/DeviceRegulationandGuidance/HumanFactors/">recommendation by the FDA</a>.</p>
<p>Ideally, prototyping should occur as early as possible to be leveraged for user research so the design can be positively iterated with hard data from that research. But product development is often <a href="http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/229433">a long road</a>. Depending on the core technology involved, it can take a year or more before a production-grade prototype is ready to put into the hands of its intended users. Luckily, you don’t always need a production-grade model for effective user research.</p>

2024 11 04 Magic of Rapid Prototyping INLINE1

<h2>How To Prototype Rapidly</h2>
<p>In comes rapid prototyping. The term “rapid prototyping” means relatively the same thing to different product development disciplines:</p>
<ul><li>A mechanical engineer or industrial designer will probably think of it in terms of physical models or parts (likely made via 3D printing).</li><li>An interaction designer might think of it in terms of wireframes or user interface—or integrating with a physical appearance model.</li></ul>
<p>It’s becoming an all-encompassing term. Generally, it means quickly and cost-effectively building a realistic model of a product—whether digital or physical—in order to evaluate and test it.</p>
<p>When it comes to prototyping for the purposes of user research, how to build is determined by what you’re building.</p>
<h3>Step One: Determine and Prioritize Prototype Features</h3>
<p>For user research, the fidelity or level of sophistication of a prototype is largely based on testing requirements: What’s important to the product’s users? What do users need to be able to do well? Should the device help reduce user error? Should it help to mitigate risk? If it’s a medical product, are there specific features the FDA might recommend to test? We often work with our clients to build a prioritized feature list.</p>

2024 11 04 Magic of Rapid Prototyping INLINE2

<p>We narrow down the requirements to the most critical. For example, it’s probably important for a user to be able to clearly identify and understand status information that is somehow visually communicated by a device. Perhaps it’s also critical that the user be able to accurately perform touchscreen data entry. Maybe you’d also like to test if certain functions are more appropriate as hard keys instead of touchscreen keys. More than likely these types of features are critical to a product’s usability. And by defining these features, we can determine which hardware and software to use.</p>
<p>The “smoke and mirrors” metaphor becomes applicable when talking about the guts of your prototype. Suppose you’re prototyping a device that can accept a sample of organic material and run some kind of analysis on that organic material (like our very own <a href="http://www.bresslergroupinteraction.com/case-studies/smiths-detection-hazmatid-elite/part-1-define">HazMatID Elite</a>). The technology inside the device that conducts the analysis is not important to the user research. What’s important is how easy or difficult it is to interact with the device—in this case, while wearing a HazMat suit—while the analysis is occurring. We can simulate that.</p>
<p>The HazMat analysis technology is something that would be prototyped and tested by electrical or chemical engineers in a lab—and is more than likely the most time-intensive aspect of the product’s development. The interface (both physical and digital) is something we can prototype and user-test by thoughtfully utilizing off-the-shelf components.</p>
<h3>Step Two: Assess Your Prototyping Technologies</h3>
<h4>Low Fidelity</h4>
<p>There are a lot of prototyping resources out there, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Because, again, the fidelity of your prototype depends on the scope of what you’re testing, and perhaps even the sophistication of your users. It may be sufficient to put an interactive wireframe in front of your users if: a) you can get your users to not take the wireframe too literally; and b) all you are testing is a digital user interface.</p>
<h4>High Fidelity</h4>
<p>If your prototype requires the aforementioned features of lights, hard keys, and a realistic touch-screen display, you might need something just a little more magical—such as microcontrollers that can interface with these components.</p>

<p>When you are making something where failure isn’t an option, you better make sure that you’re making the right thing and that you’re sure it will work.</p>

Don't Miss: The role of virtual prototyping in product development

2024 11 04 Magic of Rapid Prototyping INLINE3

<p>As more prototyping technology emerges, and as the field of interaction design evolves, we’re more frequently challenged to develop prototypes that can realistically simulate both the physical and digital user experience. Which is great, because we can add more realism to our user research to achieve better results.</p>
<p>Our rapid prototypes are required to facilitate software-to-hardware communication—and vice versa. Hitting a touchscreen button (software) might engage a small motor (hardware); the system should be able to monitor the status of that motor, and send that status information back to the display. You get the point.</p>

2024 11 04 Magic of Rapid Prototyping INLINE4

<h3>Step Three: Choose Your Tools</h3>
<p>So how do we choose which tools to use? Well, there’s a laundry list of technical and practical questions you need to ask yourself. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but some key questions are:</p>
<ul><li>What can I leverage that has already been specified for the production unit?</li><li>Is the prototyping technology well-documented?</li><li>Does the technology have an extensive development community from which I can draw support?</li><li>What kinds of application programming interfaces (APIs) are available?</li><li>How much of what I need to build is available off-the-shelf so I don’t have to reinvent the wheel?</li><li>How much processing power will I need?</li><li>Will this technology fit inside the required form factor?</li><li>What’s my budget?</li></ul>
<p>Once you’ve answered these questions, you may find that you have a lot of options or you are severely limited. You may have to make sacrifices on what you can actually test or perhaps the fidelity of a specific component. However, there’s still a pretty good chance you can come up with a viable prototyping solution appropriate for a robust user study. This is your chance to get creative and become a prototyping magician.</p>
<p><em>This article was written by Matt Thomas.</em></p>

Our Services Page: Prototype Development

<p><strong>Learn more about our&nbsp;<a href="https://www.delve.com/services/engineering/prototype-development" target="_blank">Product Prototype Development Services​</a>.</strong></p>

SEO Text: Prototype Development Services

Newsletter Signup: Medical Device Development (icon visual)

2024 11 04 Magic of Rapid Prototyping HERO

<p><strong>When it comes to prototyping for the purposes of user research, how to build is determined by what you’re building.</strong></p>

Contact Us | General (Let's build something together)

Medical Devices

Home

Insights

The Magic of Rapid Prototyping for User Research: Much More Than Smoke and Mirrors

Breadcrumbs

A full-service product design and strategic innovation consultancy.

Delve

When it comes to prototyping for the purposes of user research, how to build is determined by what you’re building.

description

generator

kSwNn6qD4B-4HloWnWMUBWQNpBx2_mPi3nMqgsh6ato

google-site-verification

purposes, user, research, build, determined, prototyping, you’re, comes, building

keywords

https://cms.delve.com/assets/images/_1200x630_crop_center-center_82_none/2024-11-04-Magic-of-Rapid-Prototyping_HERO.jpg?mtime=1730299673

https://linkedin.com/company/delvedesign/

The Magic of Rapid Prototyping for User Research: Much More Than…

https://www.delve.com/insights/the-magic-of-rapid-prototyping-for-user-research-much-more-than-smoke-and-mirrors

referrer

robots

twitter:card

twitter:creator

twitter:description

https://cms.delve.com/assets/images/_800x418_crop_center-center_82_none/2024-11-04-Magic-of-Rapid-Prototyping_HERO.jpg?mtime=1730299673

twitter:image

twitter:image:alt

twitter:image:height

twitter:image:width

twitter:site

twitter:title

{"title":{"title":"The Magic of Rapid Prototyping for User Research: Much More… | Delve"}}

Privacy Policy

FCOI Policy

Services

Case Studies

Testimonials

What We Do

About Us

Our People

Join Our Team

Careers

Newsroom

Who We Are

Boston

Madison

Philadelphia

San Francisco

Our Studios

Partner with Delve

Contact Us

Contact

<p>Vamsee Pamula, Founder &amp; President, Baebies</p>

Read informative articles from Delve's team of experts. Discover innovative strategies and insights about product design, engineering, and development.

Delve Insights: Product Innovation & Development Blog

innovation, product, design, advice, development

https://cms.delve.com/assets/images/_1200x630_crop_center-center_82_none/Delve_titlecard.png?mtime=1654035558

https://cms.delve.com/assets/images/_800x418_crop_center-center_82_none/Delve_titlecard.png?mtime=1654035558

The Magic of Rapid Prototyping for User Research: Much More Than Smoke and Mirrors

The Magic of Rapid Prototyping for User Research: Much More Than Smoke and Mirrors

Related Insights