Good Prototypes end up being worthless...
Noah McNeely
Product Designer, Engineer, Prototype and Manufacturing Expert for Inventor - Entrepreneurs, Startups, and Innovation Focused Companies
Prototypes are a critical part of most product development programs. They can validate theories of use, confirm the potential for market acceptance, and get investors to write checks.
But, too many people tend to think that a prototype is just a way to document an idea or a product. They think mainly about the precious, expensive, final prototype which looks like and works like the real product.
But, in many ways, the most valuable prototypes are the ones that fail, the ones that break, the ones that are expendable. We learn a lot more from a failure than we learn from a success - and in new product development, learning and eliminating unknowns is key to a successful product launch.
So, make prototypes planning for them to fail... make prototyping a fundamental part of your design and development process. There is absolutely nothing wrong with making a bunch of really ugly prototypes out of rubber bands, duct tape, and scrap wood. You can usually discover a lot more critical information, dollar for dollar, with cheap prototypes than you can with the really nice ones.
If your prototype works perfectly the first time, chances are you (or your engineers) aren't prototyping often enough or early enough. You haven't used prototyping as a way to save development time and reduce risk nearly as much as you could.
By all means, create fancy, high fidelity prototypes for trade shows, management, or investors! But, wait until you have already eliminated as much risk and uncertainty as you can using low cost, expendable prototypes.
Are you open to an alternative to the traditional, over-priced, design and development firm model?
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Senior Quality Engineer at MiRus™
5yVery nice article. Simple and to the point. It goes right along with the product development mantra "Fail Early Fail Often".