3 variants of prototyping: pretotype, prototype and MVP

When you have a fully developed concept of a product or service, you want to know if your target audience will use it.Prototypingcan help you find out. By creating a prototype, you are essentially building an early, simplified version of your product that can be used to allow potential users to interact with your idea.

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The result is a concrete picture of the behavior and opinion of your target audience. This is invaluable information during the development of a proposition. After all, you want to prevent elaborating an idea in great detail, only to later discover that it doesn't add value to your target audience.

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3 variants of prototyping

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At MakerLab, we distinguish between 3 forms of prototyping: pretotype, prototype and Minimum Viable Product. All three are fundamental for performing experiment design and for validating your idea. These three forms may seem the same, but they are not. In this blog, I will explain the three variants.

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1. Pretotype

The first form of prototyping is: pretotyping. This term was coined by Alberto Savoia, former Engineering Director at Google. According to him, the most significant advantage of building and using a pretotype is that it can accelerate the learning process with a 'quick & cheap' version of your idea. This type quickly, objectively, and accurately validates whether your product will be used before you actually build it. This method requires relatively little time and resources to provide sufficient evidence.

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When there is still a lot of uncertainty surrounding the concept, pretotypes are used to validate assumptions surrounding an idea. Not surprisingly, this form is often used within experiment design.

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Imagine you have an idea for a website that allows users to easily design and order their own phone cases. An example of a pretotype could be a simple landing page where you track how many visitors come to it. With this pretotype, you can relatively easily get an answer to the question of whether your target audience is interested in your service.

"The goal of pretotyping is to help you make sure that you are building 'The Right It' before you build It right." - Alberto Savoia

2. Prototype

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A prototype is also a rough version of a product or service, but this form already includes more details and functional components than the pretotype. This form of prototyping is built when you are ready to test how the target audience uses and experiences your product or service. Often, the assumptions at that stage revolve more around specific features and details.

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In the example of the phone case website, we can build a prototype for the initial design functionality. You can test this with the target audience to gather the necessary feedback. With this prototype, you can determine whether this feature aligns with the needs of your target audience and if it operates as expected.

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3. Minimum Viable Product

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The last form of prototyping, the Minimum Viable Product (MVP), contains the most detail. Compared to the pre-production and prototype, an MVP has enough functionality and processes to actually deliver value to the first paying customers.

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An MVP of the self-designed phone case website already features an ordering process and delivers the cases to the initial paying customers.

When do you deploy which form?

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The stage at which an idea is situated determines the type of prototyping you will employ (building and testing). The more evidence you have gathered that an idea is desirable, feasible, and viable, the more detailed you can get when constructing (parts of) the idea and testing it.

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Making a distinction in prototyping helps to stay focused on what actually needs to be built and, therefore, in communicating with your team and/or customer. It can be very tempting for 'the builder' to get lost in adding unnecessary details that go beyond the purpose of the experiment. By being clear about what needs to be validated, you prevent the creation of an extensive prototype or MVP when a simple pretotype is sufficient.

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Development of your concept

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At MakerLab, we naturally make extensive use of pretotypes to validate assumptions. With relatively little time, money, and resources, we can learn as much as possible, and then take the next step in the development process. This way, we assist you in progressing with your ideas without requiring significant investments. When the development of an idea is sufficiently advanced, we certainly build prototypes and MVPs, but undoubtedly, several pretotype experiments precede them.

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Would you like to learn more about how we can assist you in further developing your great ideas? Feel free to get in touch with us.

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