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What is Prototyping?
Home » Entrepreneurship » Prototyping » What is Prototyping?Prototyping is the process of putting together a working model (a prototype) to test various characteristics of a design, illustrate ideas or features and gather early user feedback. Prototyping is often considered an integral part of the development process and is believed to reduce project risk and cost.
Prototyping is a means of exploring ideas before you invest in them. All experienced craftspeople and engineers create prototypes of their work before they build anything: Architects create models out of paper or cardboard, or with virtual reality tools. Aeronautical engineers use wind tunnels. Bridge builders create stress models. Software and Web designers create mock-ups of how users will interact with their designs.
You can generate design possibilities as prototypes. Prototypes can include ideas in a sketchbook, basic screen drawings and pictorial displays, mock-ups, and even partial system implementations. Early prototypes help inspire ideas and obtain customer reaction. Later prototypes help to refine the design ideas, explore them in detail with associates, consider the artistic value, fine tune interactive details, test them with actual people, etc.
One or more prototypes are often made in the practice of incremental development where each prototype is influenced by the performance of previous designs. In this method, problems or defects in design can be corrected. When the prototype is sufficiently refined and meets the functionality, capability, manufacturability and other design goals, the product is ready for production.
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