In this article, we take you through the step-by-step process for testing your prototype—plus, tips from product experts Caitlin Goodale and Chris Roy to make the most of your prototype testing.
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Testing a prototype allows you to learn rapidly and adjust accordingly, so you can launch successful products and release new features at any stage in the product lifecycle.
Your team has been working relentlessly on the latest design—it’s looking great and you’re eager to get it into the hands of users. But before it becomes a reality, it’s time to get feedback and test your prototype with real users.
Everyone can test prototypes with Maze and collect powerful user insights before development and after launch.
A high fidelity (hi-fi) prototype is more expensive to develop, being very similar to the finished product. Hi-fi prototypes should be fully usable and have all the needed buttons, copy, and menus available for the user to review. You can also review the final design, fonts, and colors at this stage. However, it doesn’t need to show all your planned features, and some clicks or paths might still feel clunky. Typically, you’d use hi-fi prototypes to conduct usability testing and final checks before launch.
A medium fidelity (mid-fi) prototype gives users a more developed view of how the product will work. It can be used to test paths and gather user feedback. They can click on buttons and explore the product, and you can even test out specific user paths. Key pages will have some copy and design elements already, but secondary pages may still use placeholders. You’ll also get to review the information architecture at this stage. Since a mid-fi prototype is closer to your final solution, it’ll be more costly and time-consuming to create than a lo-fi prototype.
With a lo-fi prototype, you’re looking to validate concepts and design expected paths for users. You want to keep cost and effort to a minimum, so some elements won’t be finalized or even included. For example, you might include critical buttons, e.g. add to cart, while the rest aren’t clickable yet. You probably won’t have a finalized copy in this version either. Lo-fi prototype testing happens at the earliest stages of the design process.
A low fidelity (lo-fi) prototype is an inexpensive and rough version of your product. It could come in the form of a wireframe, a homemade paper sketch, or a cardboard 3D model (if your product is physical).
Depending on where you are in product design and development, there are different types of prototypes that vary in complexity, these are:
Your prototype doesn’t have to be perfect or fully functional at this stage, but it needs to have the basic functionality to solve your users’ main problem (or represent how it will do this). You can test manually in person or through virtual tools and prototype testing software .
Prototype testing is the process of testing an early version of a product or feature with real users. The purpose of prototype testing is to validate the design before development starts and identify problems early on, so you can build a product that meets user needs and expectations.
The biggest benefit of testing prototypes is being able to continuously iterate and launch products that accurately serve your user’s needs. However, that’s not the only advantage of this practice.
We spoke to Chris Roy, Head of Product Design at Stuart, and Caitlin Goodale, former Senior Product Designer at Memrise, to cover the top reasons behind prototype testing.
Imagine launching a product and then realizing your users struggle to find the ‘continue to checkout’ button. It’s a design flaw that has a direct impact on your revenue and is going to be a headache to solve when your site is already coded and live.
The most effective way to identify these black holes in your design is by testing your prototype before launching new features and making timely adjustments. If you’re using Maze, your team can import your clickable designs easily with the AdobeXD, Figma, Marvel, InVision, and Sketch integrations.
Let’s say your checkout button is on the left side of the screen and you want to know if users find it easier to locate when it’s on the right side. This is the perfect time to test your prototype with A/B testing. “It’s worth going to the lengths of creating a prototype if you have a hypothesis to prove or debunk,” says Chris Roy, Head of Product Design at Stuart. This will help focus your efforts and make your findings more actionable.
To validate your hypothesis, run tests to answer questions like:
Can people navigate through the app and complete key steps?
Do people understand what your copy instructs them to do?
Does the design encourage discoverability?
Answer the previous questions at all stages of product development, and after launch, so you can continuously iterate and improve your product.
Caitlin Goodale, former Senior Product Designer at Memrise, says, “Things that seemed clear to us on the product team were often totally incomprehensible to real users.” By speaking directly to the people using the product, your team can empathize with users and identify any false assumptions or cognitive biases, prior to launch.
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If your customers have a negative experience with your product, you’ll get negative feedback. The best way to avoid this is by getting input from real users before you release.
Caitlin explains that her team always tries to get real users to interact with the product, “to get an early read on how the design is working, what they understand, and what they don’t”. As she experienced, prototype testing allows you to preempt problems before they become negative reviews, and understand user needs before they become poor user experiences.
The saying ‘it’s better safe than sorry’ was made for prototype testing. It’s much cheaper and far less time-consuming to fix a design in the prototype stage before release, than it is to deploy bug fixes, respond to unsatisfied users, and potentially re-release the entire product.
If you have a solid prototype testing regime in place, you can avoid the lost resources (and reputation) spent rectifying a problem that could have been spotted sooner. “It’s so important to have a broad perspective on the designs we’ve made and identify issues before we invest money and time in developing them fully with the dev team,” says Caitlin.
You have two options for your new product: one solves your users’ problem in less steps, the other has a longer user journey but will be faster to build. Your gut says option A would serve your user better, but understandably, the board is more likely to sign off on option B.
When you invest in A/B and usability testing for both prototypes, you get the evidence you need: your users lose interest fast with option B and tell you they wouldn’t use a product that involves that many steps. Now, you can attend the board meeting with genuine feedback and real user data—ultimately getting buy-in for the best product you can make.
Prototyping is the process of creating a functional mockup of your product before development. Prototyping helps you make sure your product works as intended and solves your users’ problem, before you write your first line of code. User feedback on your prototype gives you insight needed to improve the idea while it’s still easy to make those changes.
There are a few different methods of prototyping! The method of prototyping you choose will depend on what stage you’re at in the design process, your collaboration needs, and personal preference. Some users prefer to sketch with a pen and paper when putting down their initial designs while others may prefer a digital mock-up so they can more easily collaborate in real time with other designers.
A low-fidelity prototype would be one that gets the general idea of the product down at an earlier stage of the process, while a high fidelity prototype would be one that looks and feels more like the real thing, and typically takes more time to put together, and is used most often at later stages of the design process.
Prototypes are great for testing out ideas and understanding the needs and behaviours of your users. They’re also a great way to demonstrate ideas to stakeholders with the ability to iterate quickly.
Adding an additional step to your design process might seem like it will take longer to get your designs out there, but prototyping will save you a lot of time in the long run. Taking the time to go through the prototyping process means any issues are identified early, avoiding having to make difficult and time consuming changes later down the line in development.
Finding a problem with your product in the development phase means more work for the development team and more time and resources spent reworking your product. If you have a prototype you’re happy with before development starts you can be sure the development of your final product will go smoothly.
Since prototyping in Marvel is so fast you can easily make changes to your project as you get feedback. It’s much quicker to incorporate feedback from users into a prototype than into a developed project. Being able to make these changes quickly ensures your product will solve your user’s problem.
Even if you prefer to sketch out your ideas using pen and paper, your designs can be brought into Marvel and turned into an interactive prototype in a matter of minutes. Since the prototyping step ultimately ensures your product is as usable and useful as it can be, it’s worth the extra effort!
User testing is a method of evaluating the performance of your product through feedback from your users. Ballpark provides audio, video, and screen recording of the user’s journey through your product along with insights like time spent on each screen, misclicks, and whether the user hit the goal screen if one was set.
There are many questions you can answer about your design through user testing including:
You may be tempted to wait until your product is live to test it but that can lead to more work down the road. Prototypes in Marvel are easily duplicated and updated allowing you to iterate on your ideas without the hassle of updating code and deploying an update. Prototyping first, means you’ll go live with a tested and optimised version of your product.
The insights you get from having users test your prototypes through user testing will likely give you a list of things to tweak or improve in the design or flow of your project.
Collaboration, and involving others in the design process, has been core to how we’ve built prototyping in Marvel. Bringing users into the process, seeing how they interact with the prototype and listening to their ideas, gives you more data points. More data ultimately means more informed decisions about the product, leading to better product outcomes.
To go one step further, you could consider using co-creation from the start. Co-creation has been found to be one of the best ways of making a product that will best solve a user’s problem. Co-creation is the process of inviting feedback from stakeholders (usually customers) and enabling them to participate in the ideation or design process, producing an outcome that’s beneficial to everyone involved.
Instead of designing your product with a fictional persona in mind, co-creation allows you to work alongside users and stakeholders to create something that perfectly addresses their challenges. Incorporating that feedback at the prototyping stage will save you time, resources, and make your product better in the long run.
Prototyping is an integral part of the design process for any digital product. Set yourself up for success from the beginning by adding prototyping to your design process. Start prototyping in Marvel today.
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