How Products Get Rough Drafts

Products can have rough drafts too. To see how well they work and what people think of them, companies often create early samples—or prototypes—of potential products. Here are some examples of prototypes that turned into popular gadgets and gizmos (aplenty); sometimes, as in the case of the iPhone, they may look nothing like the product that ultimately made it to market. Learn more about the prototyping cycle by researching the the terms below, then discuss with your team: are there other things in life that would benefit from prototyping? Is there any difference between a prototype and a draft?

sketches | storyboarding | paper prototypes | low vs. high fidelity
wireframing | mockup | proof of concept | user testing
minimum viable product | minimum marketable feature

In 1991 Sony built a CD add-on for Nintendo's console and called it the Play Station. The partnership collapsed — and the abandoned prototype grew into the console that beat Nintendo.

Key concepts

The Prototyping Cycle: A loop, not a straight line: shape an idea, build a rough version, put it in front of someone, learn what is wrong, and go round again. Each pass narrows what you do not know, and the loop only stops when the design is locked in.
Anchoring: The moment a thing looks finished, people start defending it instead of improving it — which is why the roughest version often gets the most honest reaction.

Every work — at a glance

iPhone M68 Prototype — Apple (prototype)

The original iPhone's development board — a bare red circuit board the size of a PC motherboard with a screen bolted to one corner, built to answer whether the radio and the screen worked at all.
Sketches (method)

The fastest, cheapest prototype: a drawing costs a minute, so you can make twenty and throw away nineteen without flinching.
Storyboarding (method)

A sequence of rough frames showing what someone sees and does at each step — borrowed from animation, and the one tool that shows the journey between screens rather than a single screen.
Paper Prototypes (method)

Hand-drawn screens a real user 'operates' by pointing, while someone opposite swaps the sheets to play the part of the computer.
Low vs. High Fidelity (concept)

How closely a prototype resembles the finished thing — a scribble at one end, a clickable replica at the other. The skill is matching fidelity to how much you still do not know.
Wireframing (method)

The skeleton of a screen — grey boxes where things go, no colour or images — so the argument stays about what matters most, not about the shade of blue.
Mockup (method)

Exactly what the finished product will look like, and nothing working behind it — so realistic that executives routinely mistake it for a thing that already exists.
Proof of Concept (method)

A small, deliberately ugly build whose only job is to show that the riskiest assumption is not fatal — can this run in time, will this material hold?
User Testing (method)

Watching real people try the thing, under one rule: you must shut up, because the product will not be there to explain itself to the next person.
Minimum Viable Product (concept)

The smallest version you can actually release and still learn something true from real users — an experiment with a hypothesis attached, not just a cheap product.
Minimum Marketable Feature (concept)

The smallest slice of function a customer would value and pay for — the MVP asks what we can learn, this asks what we can sell.

What to know

01
Is there any difference between a prototype and a draft? Both are cheap first versions built to be revised, but a draft describes what will happen while a prototype tests it — you hand it to someone and watch reality push back, which is why the prototyping cycle keeps producing surprises a plan never does.
02
What else in life would benefit from a rough draft? Anything you can build small and let reality answer: a lesson taught to one class before the whole year, a park chalked onto the pavement before it is paved, a menu run for a single night.

Across subjects

Antoni Gaudí had to know what curve could hold up a stone church. So he hung strings from a board, weighted them with little bags of shot, and let gravity find the shape; photographed and flipped upside down, the sagging strings became the arches of the Sagrada Família. The model did the calculation.

Theme connection

How finished should a rough draft look? Low fidelity keeps everyone honest — nobody is afraid to tear up a sketch. High fidelity gets a real reaction from a real user, and risks convincing you, and everyone else, that the decision has already been made.

Practice

Check what you've read

Pick the best answer — you'll see why each option is right or wrong.

Question 1 of 2

SOCWhat do we call the build-test-refine loop used to develop an idea before the design is locked in?

Question 2 of 2

SOCA prototype's 'fidelity' is BEST described as —