Live Prototyping
Purpose
To test how an innovation would work if it became a reality.
When To Run This
You want to test and measure your innovation against your hypotheses.
Time
As long as it takes to get significant results.
Input
- Hypotheses
Materials
- A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) - a version of your innovation with enough features that it’s able to do the task it was built for
TheSteps
Prepare:Prepare:
Create your hypotheses. Use the Hypothesis Creation tool to figure out what you want to test in your Live Prototype.
Define your MVP. What features or capabilities does the innovation need before it’s useful? To help you decide, you can use the Impact/Effort Matrix tool or the Feature Bucket model.
- For the Feature Bucket model, sort your features out into these 3 buckets
- Must have (MVP feature set)
- Nice to have
- Not needed
- For the Feature Bucket model, sort your features out into these 3 buckets
Decide how you’ll collect results or feedback. Think about which metrics make sense for your test, such as tracking data, the amount of users, or their satisfaction scores. You could also do a survey at the end of the Live Prototype.
Prepare the test. Organise everything you’ll need to run your Live Prototype. Does it need a physical test space or a server? Will you need to promote the MVP to get people to use it?
Action It:Action It:
Run the test. If it’s possible, you can save time by doing a few Live Prototypes simultaneously to compare a variety of ideas and see how they work together
Next Steps:Next Steps:
Analyse the results.
- How well did your Live Prototype work?
- What was the user feedback?
- Did it prove or disprove your hypothesis?
Keep improving. Live Prototypes are all about learning and fixing problems quickly so that you can push your solution to its best version. If something didn’t work on Day 1, try a new approach on Day 2.