The new prototyping paradigm - #24

Time for something different this week. I've started reading some of the newsletters I receive and I've noticed something - curation is great, but creation is better, so I'm going to start sharing some more personal stories and experiences here.. and then follow with the best of the web that I've been reading, and I think you'll appreciate reading too.

Prototype to learn (value)

I had a chat with an old connection this past week. Back in the day, I actually designed them a logo and a pretty hefty website, back when companies would brand their individual business units... anyway, I digress.

Gary (let's call him Gary), was sharing how he had handed over the day-to-day running on his production business to the team and he was now investigating business opportunities. One of his oldest friends was keen to work on a business with him in a prevalent, but lacklustre direct to consumer industry, serviced by a global monopoly.

Now, I don't need to know much more when learning that this monopoly had in recent years bought a UK competitor, with a clear resulting action: The at home software hadn't changed in years, didn't provide an end-to-end digital journey for the customer and was truly leaving a lot of money on the table. Gary's contact used to work with this company and knew that no one was looking at the customer app opportunity.

Now usefully, I'm also a customer of this in-home thing. I knew the problems, and with my strategist head on, could clearly point at an opportunity.

After a 30-minute exchange, I took lunch and then thought about how this could work.

Ask me 5 years ago, I'd be looking at completing an opportunity canvas, looking at the Total Addressable Market, auditing the current experience and building a case, but not working on a prototype. Previously we'd say "it's too early to jump to solutions."

Today, I see the product playbook being thrown out the window, interestingly in favour of what founders would actually do - make a concept. And seeing as this was an iteration and a prototype would be the best form to talk about the business opportunity and test with users, a prototype (in this case) was the best way forward.

So I got prototyping. Lovable is my current tool of choice for pure prototyping, so after a few prompts and tweaks, I arrived at a prototype.

Now this is where my experience comes in useful. It's best to limit the features, focus on a key user need, identify the business opportunity and don't do much more than that. For example, authentication would be key here, but for ease, I didn't include it. Showing further screens in the ecommerce journey could also help, but I resisted.

Sharing it back with Gary, he came back with

"Wow this instantly looks great. Let me share it"

Yet another case of not letting process get in the way, having multiple discovery meetings first and looking at competitors. Get to the thing to understand whether it's valuable, then look at framing the opportunity (you could use The Build Loop) for that!.

And don't forget the real reason companies drown in meetings!

Appreciate your attention this week,

Ross

P.S. Do let me know if you like this story + links format!

News and stories that caught my eye this week: