How prototypes help founders develop their products and ideas

A couple months ago, I wrote about an important step in the startup process that many founders overlook: customer research. Customer research helps you understand your customers’ problems in a way that aligns with their lived realities.

Prototyping is the next step in getting your software idea off the ground and closer to reality. But, like customer research, it can be something founders neglect. Really, prototypes are where ideas start to become products. We don’t recommend that you start your development process without one.

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Prototyping means experiencing, not just thinking about, an idea

A prototype makes an idea something that end users and stakeholders can experience. It helps usher a conversation based on something concrete instead of asking people to use their imaginations. Additionally, going through the exercise of creating a prototype helps founders think through their ideas at a deeper level, surfacing new unknowns and questions to resolve.

The more you can learn via prototyping before breaking ground on development, the more effective the use of your time and budget will be when it comes to producing your end product. You'll also have something you can share with your development team so they know what to build, and can do so confidently.

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Kinds of prototypes to bring your idea into existence

Anything that gives your idea tangibility can be considered a prototype. A pitch deck is a prototype. A workflow diagram can be a prototype too. In the context of software development, prototypes simulate software that people can see and interact with. A prototype can be produced in a lot of forms and at a lot of different junctures in the product development life cycle, but all exist for the purposes of learning and iterating. Below are the most common kinds of early prototypes.

• Throwaway or rapid prototypes: Early in the startup process, your prototype can be much lower fidelity than what the final product will be. At this stage you're trying express how an idea in your head will come to life. This first prototype is often called the throwaway or rapid prototype, aptly named because none of these will be the final incarnation of your product. But they are fast to produce, learn from, and gather momentum. It doesn’t have to be fancy to help you think through the finer details. Your rapid prototype could be as simple as drawings on a whiteboard or the back of a napkin.
• Wireframes: Then, there are wireframes. Modern product wireframes are digital representations of a user interface (the screens users see and click), often produced in design tools like Figma or Sketch. Because they let users see what it will look like, wireframes offer a close approximation of the real-life experience of a product. Wireframes can also be easily made clickable, which enhances your prototype’s real-world feel.
• No-code apps or workflows: Many founders lean into no-code technology to create the highest-fidelity prototype possible before a single line of code is written. A no-code application offers real databases, real interactivity, real automation—all executable from a visually-driven drag ‘n’ drop tool. Ultimately, no-code technology allows you to develop apps for people to actually use as an application beyond the purposes of prototyping.

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Prototypes that become product through custom code

After you’ve thought through and gotten feedback on your idea using pre-code prototypes, it might be time to up your investment by committing your product to code. Once you start building your product, the testing and learning should not end. That's why there are prototyping approaches that occur during the build as well. In these approaches, you’re building your real product, but still letting yourself learn and course correct as you go.

• Evolutionary prototypes: With this prototype, you're actually building a small part of your end product. This, in the language that Cloudburst and many technology startups use, is often known as the MVP (Minimum Viable Product). It allows you to get to market and sell to customers with a working product that has a limited set of features. Getting a real product to market, however limited the subset of features, is another opportunity to get your idea into the hands of real users and learn.
• Incremental prototypes: This type of prototype uses an incremental step-by-step approach, which allows software teams to release a complete module of software before working on the next one, gleaning insights as they proceed module-by-module, component-by-component, or however a team decides to parcel out development. This is a common prototyping method for enterprise software. It allows teams to focus on—and test—a first pass of a feature. Then, the team can learn and refine next steps from there. An example of incremental prototyping would be building a system and using it internally before making it customer facing.
• Extreme prototyping: This type of prototype uses simulated services to takes a prototype from static visual interface to working capabilities. Eventually, the simulated services are wired up to become automated. This approach again adds more functionality while learning from earlier stages. An example of this method would be having a human answer questions in a text or chat function that is later replaced by a chatbot.

These approaches might sound very specific, but there's a lot of flexibility in terms what kind of prototype you can produce that will provide value. The important thing to remember is they all produce something in order to learn and iterate. Talking to a software partner like Cloudburst can help you decide on the best way to prototype when you’re ready to start coding.

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There are many levels of prototyping, but all of them help founders develop ideas more thoroughly, test ideas at lower thresholds of investment, get feedback from real users who will be impacted, and refine their end visions. Successfully advancing from idea to product is a process that is best done step by step. Prototypes help startup founders take those steps at the right time and the right price.

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