Strategies For Rapid Prototyping In Innovation

Rapid testing is your secret weapon for making data-driven decisions fast. Unlike A/B testing, which can take weeks, rapid tests can deliver actionable insights in hours. This lean approach helps teams validate ideas, designs, and features quickly and iteratively. It's not about replacing A/B testing. It's about understanding if you're moving in the right direction before committing resources. Rapid testing speeds up results, limits politics in decision-making, and helps narrow down ideas efficiently. It's also budget-friendly and great for identifying potential issues early. But how do you choose the right rapid testing method? Task completion analysis measures success rates and time-on-task for specific user actions. First-click tests evaluate the intuitiveness of primary actions or information on a page. Tree testing focuses on how well users can navigate your site's structure. Sentiment analysis gauges user emotions and opinions about a product or experience. 5-second tests assess immediate impressions of designs or messages. Design surveys collect qualitative feedback on wireframes or mockups. The key is selecting the method that best aligns with your specific goals and questions. By leveraging rapid testing, you can de-risk decisions and innovate faster. It's not about replacing thorough research. It's about getting quick, directional data to inform your next steps. So before you invest heavily in that new feature or redesign, consider running a rapid test. It might just save you from a costly misstep and point you towards a more successful solution.

TL;DR: Slack → GPT → Spec → Prototype 💡 Ever find your best ideas buried in a Slack thread—and the manual process of extracting them slowing you down? 💬 I ran into this often at Bumble Inc., so I built a custom GPT to help. Instead of manually recreating brainstorms or sketching early prototypes, I now take screenshots of the Slack discussion and send them to my GPT. It parses the chat, extracts the key ideas, and formats them into a mini spec—snack-size and ready to drop into Figma for prototyping. ⚡ This includes annotating who talked about which part of the idea, so when we go back to discuss things we can talk to that person and get even more context. It’s essentially “rapid prototyping,” but instead of sketching wireframes, I'm turning entire conversation threads into structured specs. Not only is it faster, but it also helps me spot conversation imbalances—like when we spent too long on one idea and barely touched another. I’m always looking for ways to pull more value out of Slack discussions—what’s working for you? 🤔 #ProductManagementAI

Faster than FedEx! (a rapid prototyping success story) Several years ago we were working on a medical project involving a plunger / punch mechanism that had a diaphragm seal in the center. I had sketched up a design, thinking about how we would manufacture it (from the start) we found some silicone diaphragm valves from a vendor and they had 6-day shipping. in this case we didn't want to wait around to see if the idea worked. so we fired up the #formlabs SLA printer and printed these little compression molds, with 3mm dowels that we had on hand (for alignment of the two mold halves). I squished some jewelry casting #silicone between the molds and waited 15 minutes. total time, start to part, was about 6 hours that includes sketching, CAD, printing the mold, molding the parts, and testing. we quickly validated that this design idea would work, the assembly strategy would work, and functionally it would work once we had the right silicone materials. so now we could wait the one week lead time with less risk to the schedule I've also successfully used FDM molds with this casting silicone also... you just get a few more layer lines on the surface. so if you're not looking for a watertight seal FDM printing works also. but why do we care about speed in product development? is it because we're impatient? no, will maybe partly... it's because the only asset we can't replace is time. if I wait a week or two to make a design decision that week or two is gone. forever. we can't buy it back. so now your project will be 1 to 2 weeks late hitting the market. and that has real revenue implications. does that matter? maybe not if it happens once, but in R&D we're making hundreds of decisions. if every decision takes a one or two week lead time to make, we can set ourself back months, or years. think about ways to short circuit your exploration cycle. figure out what works as early as possible using the crudest means possible. test rigorously so that in 2-3 months from now you can look back and say "yes we are on the right track, because I identified these high-risk areas and tested them early." don't wait until your entire product is designed and documented to start testing your ideas. test individual bits and pieces of your concept as you are designing it. prototype (in parallel) several different variations and when you pick one you will feel confident that you have explored other options. and if you're stuck trying to figure out how to rapid prototype your ideas, call me or shoot me a DM and I'll help 763-344-1308 #rapidprototyping #design #engineering