Description
A great activity to do before prototyping
Reading Time
7 mins
Activity time
20 mins
Overview
What is this for?
This 20-min activity is designed to help a group of people think through multiple ways to test a new solution idea with minimal time and effort. This activity helps to inspire creative ways to test with customers and is a precursor to building a rapid prototype.
Mindset and core principles
A fundamental principle in Design Thinking is to test ideas quickly. Rapid prototyping is a proven way to get early validation and reduce the uncertainty and risk of new initiatives.
Pre-requisites
A potential solution idea has already been chosen/defined
In the instructions below we’ll follow an example from a real group workshop:
In this example you can see some things have already been defined:
- The overall topic/challenge (green sticky)
- Killer questions (purple stickies) that the group aims to solve with the potential solution idea
- And a solution sketch that illustrates the key ideas to be tested
Tips before you start
- It's essential that a basic solution idea already exists before undertaking this activity
- If there is no clear idea yet, check out the Design Sprint activities for some methods to collaboratively come up with solution ideas: Day 2 - Ideation Activities
- Explain the fundamental principle of rapid prototyping to the group: i.e. to quickly test an idea (in a matter of hours or days) to gain real customer reactions and reduce the risk of failure
- It's important that everyone understands the purpose of this activity and what will happen next
Step 1: Three months
- Set a timer for 5 mins
- Ask the group to “imagine you had 3 months to create a prototype to test the solution with customers”
- Ask them to start calling out options as they think of them
- If the group has trouble getting started you can kick off with 1 or 2 ideas of your own
- Write each option so the group can see their ideas (or welcome participants to write themselves)
- Continue until the time is up, or until you have 6-10 ideas (aim for variety)
Step 2: Three days
- Set a timer for 5 mins
- Now “imagine you only had 3 days to create a prototype to test the solution with customers”
- Ask the group to start calling out options (or note them down themselves)
Step 3: Three hours
- Set a timer for 5 mins
- Repeat the process but imagine you only had 3 hours to create a very fast prototype...
- The options the group suggests should now be very fast and simple
- The purpose of going through these iterative steps is to guide the group to a different way of thinking. Our usual mindset is to think about how to implement full-scale solutions. This method helps teams find much faster ways to validate (or invalidate) new ideas and reduce the uncertainty and risk of innovation.
Choose an option
- You can use group voting OR a decider can make the final choice
- The most important thing to remember is the way you choose to test the idea with customers should provide you with answers that will help you validate (or invalidate) the solution direction
Additional Resources
Recommended reading
- Sprint - A book about the Google Ventures "Design Sprint" methodology
- Testing Business Ideas - Strategyzer book which includes a large library of testing methods
- Prototyping 101
- The "Rapid Prototyping" Mindset
Additional Resources
Related workshop activities
- Design Sprint recipe activities: