Prototyping Planning

Explorative prototyping involves creating new options and potential solutions based on an initial service concept. It involves building prototypes to explore and understand the opportunities and challenges within the solution space. Imagine you have a service concept or idea and want to develop further and refine it. Instead of just discussing or brainstorming ideas, explorative prototyping allows you to physically create prototypes that represent different options. These prototypes can be simple and rough, using materials and tools readily available in your workspace.

The goal of explorative prototyping is not to create a final, polished product but rather to learn and gain insights about the potential value, functionality, and user experience of a future service. Building multiple prototypes in parallel allows you to quickly compare and evaluate different ideas. Remember that these prototypes are meant to be discarded or modified, so they don't need to be perfect or durable.

Evaluative prototyping gathers feedback on prototypes to understand how people experience a potential future service. It involves conducting tests to evaluate specific questions or hypotheses that you have in mind. Let's say you have developed a prototype for a new service and want to gather insights about how users perceive and engage with it. Evaluative prototyping allows you to carefully assess your assumptions through different types of testing. Depending on the situation, these tests can be formal and structured or more informal and spontaneous.

When conducting formal evaluative prototyping, you aim to create prototypes that closely resemble the real service experience. For example, if you're interested in understanding users' emotional responses, you would provide them with an opportunity to actually experience the service or be a part of it. This immersive approach helps capture genuine reactions and feedback.

Qualitative research and analysis methods like contextual and in-depth interviews are used to support the evaluation process. They provide valuable insights and metrics that help you gather meaningful and factual data about user experiences.

Communicative prototyping is a fast way to share important aspects of a prototype with selected audiences. It helps facilitate collaboration, supports decision-making, and reduces friction in a project. For example, a service design team may create a rough prototype of a new app feature to quickly demonstrate how it could work to their stakeholders.

Presentational prototyping is used to persuade and inspire management or key stakeholders. These prototypes are usually polished and adapted from previous prototyping activities. For example, a service design team may create a highly detailed prototype of a new service experience to present to a company's executives to demonstrate the potential value of the new service.

Both communicative and presentational prototyping are valuable tools for reducing misunderstandings, sparking discussions, and making important decisions in service design projects.

Deciding why you are prototyping and for whom is an important step in the prototyping process. You might be prototyping to test a new product or service or to improve an existing product or service based on user feedback. Depending on your goals, you’ll need to select your prototyping session participants. When doing so, consider the following factors:

• Relevance: The audience should be relevant to the concept you are prototyping. Identify the stakeholders directly interested in the concept, such as project team members, colleagues, current staff, internal/external experts, clients, potential users, customers, and future staff.
• Proximity: As a rule of thumb, recruiting participants who are closer to the project team is easier and faster. These individuals may include project team members, colleagues, and current staff. They are more readily available and have a better understanding of the project context.
• Diversity: Include a diverse range of participants to ensure a well-rounded perspective. Aim to involve individuals from different backgrounds, expertise, and roles within the organization. This diversity will provide valuable insights and help identify a wider range of potential issues or improvements.
• Users and customers: Your ultimate goal should be to involve actual users and customers in the prototyping sessions as early as possible. Their feedback and reactions will be crucial in refining and improving the concept. Actively seek out representatives from your target user group to participate in the prototyping activities.

Develop a sampling strategy based on the above considerations. This strategy should outline the criteria for selecting participants, such as their relevance, proximity, diversity, and availability. Consider using a mix of purposive sampling (selecting individuals with specific characteristics or expertise) and convenience sampling (recruiting participants who are easily accessible).

The fidelity of a prototype refers to how closely it resembles the final product or service, both in terms of its appearance and functionality. Here are the key steps in deciding the fidelity for prototyping in service design:

• Understand the purpose. Start by clarifying the specific objectives and goals of your prototyping activities. Consider what you are trying to learn, communicate, or validate through the prototype.
• Define prototyping goals. Identify the specific aspects or elements of the service that you want to focus on in the prototype. This could be related to user interactions, service flow, physical touchpoints, or any other key components.
• Consider the stage of development. In the early stages, when exploring ideas and gathering feedback, low-fidelity prototypes can be more suitable. As the design progresses and becomes more refined, higher-fidelity prototypes can provide a more realistic representation.
• Evaluate user needs. High-fidelity prototypes can provide a more immersive experience for users, allowing them to better understand and provide feedback on the service. However, in some cases, low-fidelity prototypes may be sufficient for gathering insights or validating specific aspects of the service design.
• Take stock of available resources. Higher-fidelity prototypes often require more time, effort, and resources, such as specialized software, equipment, or skilled professionals. So, consider the available budget, time constraints, and team capabilities when deciding on the fidelity level.
• Choose an iterative approach. Service design is an iterative process, and prototypes are meant to be refined and improved based on feedback and insights gained from testing. You can start with low-fidelity prototypes to quickly iterate and gather feedback early on. As the design progresses and the understanding deepens, gradually increase the fidelity to align with the evolving needs and goals.
• Balancing realism and cost. Higher-fidelity prototypes can be more realistic and provide a better representation of the final service, but they can also be more expensive and time-consuming to develop. Assess the trade-offs between realism and the resources required, ensuring that the fidelity level is appropriate for the goals and constraints of your project.

Remember that the fidelity of the prototype is not fixed and can be adjusted as the design process evolves. Continuously evaluate and adapt the fidelity level to effectively communicate and validate the service design concept at each stage of development.

Prototyping context is the environment and setting in which prototyping sessions are conducted. It involves choosing between two major approaches:

• Contextual prototyping: Contextual prototyping takes place in the actual environment where the final service or product will be used. The contextual prototyping for a new retail experience would involve conducting the prototyping session in an actual shop. By immersing the participants in the real context, you can understand what works and what doesn't and capture the crucial nuances for implementation.
• Lab prototyping: Lab prototyping occurs in a controlled environment such as a laboratory or any place that is detached from the actual context. This method is chosen when the real context is not accessible, does not allow changes, or is too expensive to use. In such cases, the prototyping sessions are conducted in a simulated setting. For example, a team simulates a hospital waiting room to test a new patient check-in system. They observe and gather feedback from participants to refine the prototype before implementing it in the actual hospital environment. While lab prototyping may lack the authenticity of the real context, it still allows for iterative testing and evaluation of the prototypes.

The choice between contextual and lab prototyping depends on various factors like the availability and feasibility of the real context, the cost involved, and the specific prototyping goals. No matter what you choose, remember that the more your prototyping environment and situations are like the real thing, the more trustworthy the feedback you get will be when you evaluate your prototype.^[1]

Selecting the right prototyping method is crucial for effectively testing and refining service concepts before implementation. The choice depends on the specific needs, resources, and complexity of the service being designed.

• Low-fidelity prototyping methods: Low-fidelity prototypes are quick, simple, and inexpensive representations used to explore early design concepts and gather initial feedback. They can be hand-drawn sketches or storyboards, paper or cardboard prototypes that simulate basic user interfaces and interactions.
• Medium-fidelity prototyping methods: Medium-fidelity prototypes balance simplicity and detail, providing a more refined representation of the service concept. They can be digital wireframes or clickable interactive prototypes that simulate user interactions and transitions.
• High-fidelity prototyping methods: High-fidelity prototypes closely resemble the final service, incorporating more detailed design and functionality. They can be fully functional digital or experiential prototypes that closely replicate the intended service experience, 3D printed models, or VR prototypes, among others.

Note that these prototyping methods are not mutually exclusive. You can always combine them to gain comprehensive insights.