Inventions and Prototypes

Good prototypes can refine a product or a service, reveal potential problems in the design and convince doubters that an invention is worth taking to market.

Most ideas get vapourised
Remember the Sky Commuter Car, the personal plane by Flight Innovations that meant you could literally fly over the rush hour congestion? No? That’s because it’s an example of “vapourware”; a term used to describe a product that has been announced by overoptimistic developers during its building phase but never actually succeeds in the marketplace. Sadly, the Sky Commuter remains a futuristic-sounding dream and, after more than $6 million in funding, the project was shelved. Sometimes it’s the cheaply improvised prototypes that pay off instead. Anthony Fadell’s foam-core board models of his idea, balanced with fishing weights, helped to confound the cynics who though that there were already too many of his product in the marketplace. Lucky it did too – Fadell was the team leader of Apple’s iPod development team.

Dos and Don’ts

Do:
Begin early: the sooner you make ideas a physical reality and get them in front of people, the better your final design will be.

Make an adaptable prototype: that way you can easily modify it wherever you happen to be, even without all the right tools.

Learn from your mistakes: even the best ideas need a trial run.

Don’t:
Be a perfectionist: the prototype exists to get information, not to show how brilliant the design is.

Waste time: even a little information from a prototype goes a long way, so find out what you need to test and focus on getting those answers.

Source: The Marketer, September 2009 p. 6-7