Rapid Prototypes

Rapid prototyping can be a helpful tool for us as digital project managers to help clients who ask the question; ‘But will this work?’ and ‘How will this work?’ Often the simple, but frustrating answer is simply, ‘We don’t know yet – but let us help you work it out.’ A great way of working it out, and one that’s becoming increasingly popular with agencies and clients is by rapid prototyping -investing a little to make an informed decision on product viability before making any big investments.

Our industry moves at lightning speed, and as a digital project manager, we have to be quick to adapt to new ways of working. A current example of that is rapid prototyping. Nine months ago, I had never worked on a rapid prototyping project and now I’ve just wrapped up my fourth rapid prototyping project to test product viability quickly. So if you haven’t already worked on a rapid prototyping project, I’m in no doubt one is just around the corner for you.

Rapid prototyping refers to the process applied to building a proof of concept or rapid prototypes. A prototype is good for testing the validity of a concept. It will allow you to develop more features, faster but this is normally at the cost of quality and for this reason, the product will be, for the most part, disposable.