Specification-driven vs. Prototype-driven Design in Startups

Are you a coach or consultant who recently launched out on your own? Or maybe you are contemplating the leap into business ownership? A noticeable number of workers are leaving corporate life and starting their own businesses. I have technically been an independent contractor since serving as a wedding musician at eight years old. Fourteen years later, I founded a music performance business that has evolved to include coaching and consulting services. I have also helped clients to start for-profit and non-profit organizations. So, this article is written primarily for fellow coaches, consultants, and solopreneurs who have left established businesses, launched out on their own, and recently started a new venture—and those who are considering doing the same. 

Specification-driven versus prototype-driven design

Specification-driven design can work for a situation where the customer and their preferences are known. A startup may not have the user persona inputs (e.g., desired features) required to write a spec sheet or traditional design brief. Rapid prototyping is a skill startup founders are leveraging to navigate a sea of unknowns and identify desired features and specifications that will eventually drive the design of business offerings.

In short, prototyping helps startups to build a bridge between speculations and specifications. 

Prototyping gives form to an idea to explore strengths, weaknesses, and new directions for future iterations. Founders can prototype material objects, intangible services, and more abstract challenges, including the design of new strategies, organizations, business models, products, and services (Brown, 2009). Low-fidelity representations are helpful in the early stages. The purpose is to invite a user into the product development process at an early stage and gather information about their behavior and preferences. Whereas behavioral prototypes explore early concepts before physical prototypes are crafted, concept prototypes generate early feedback to learn what customers want (Kumar, 2013). As more user data is collected, rough prototypes evolve into refined iterations until real-world value is demonstrated (Kumar, 2013). 

Getting an early start with rapid prototyping 

When it comes to rapid prototyping, starting early is the name of the game. Lean Startup author Eric Ries’ promoted the idea of the minimum viable product (MVP) built with the smallest possible set of core features to test customer-related hypotheses. Although creating a low-fidelity MVP challenges the traditional notion of quality, Ries argued that rapid prototyping is more effective than speculation or whiteboarding strategy sessions because you can learn what features customers care about. The goal is “to find out whether you understood the customer problem well enough to define key elements of the solution” (Blank & Dorf, 2020, p.61). Rapid prototyping prevents money and time from being wasted, and most importantly, it prevents us from building things customers don’t want. It also creates awareness among potential clients and customers and helps us to shape our designs as we go along. 

Prototyping is becoming more popular to think visually, act quickly, and gather input from potential users to include in the design brief. Author Michael Schrage argued that prototypes are hypotheses designed to make educated guesses about future performance and user reactions. Tech entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki advised startups to (1) try their hand at the prototype, (2) immediately get it to market, and (3) iterate quickly. 

Fellow perfectionists, beware. You will need to temporarily suspend the urge to keep working on the prototype until it’s flawless before showing it to someone else. As a recovering perfectionist, I have (at times, reluctantly) adopted the Good Enough to Move On (GETMO) strategy to accelerate new ideas. The good news is that making prototypes leverages right-brained techniques associated with creativity, and testing them leverages left-brained methods related to science and logic. 

References

Blank, S., & Dorf, B. (2020). The startup owner's manual: The step-by-step guide for building a great company. Wiley. 

Brown, T. (2009). Change by design: How design thinking transforms organizations and inspires innovation. HarperCollins. 

Kawasaki, G. (2004). The art of the start: The time-tested, battle-hardened guide for anyone starting anything. Penguin. 

Kumar, V. (2013). 101 design methods: A structured approach for driving innovation in your organization. Wiley. 

Ries, E. (2011). The lean startup: How today's entrepreneurs use continuous innovation to create radically successful businesses. Currency. 

Schrage, M. (2016). The innovator’s hypothesis: How cheap experiments are worth more than good ideas. MIT.