Many of us have watched a drama being unfold on stage. Great actors make the characters come live in front of us. We are mesmerized by their performance. Our emotions swing like a pendulum as the story moves from the opening act to climax, and finally, the end. Why does this happen? After all, it's all just a play!
We know that the set is just a facade. It's not real. Yet, the story, the plot, the performance make us ignore this fact. We live in that world for those couple of hours. The facade is good enough for us if it is aligned with the story and the characters.
We can learn a lot from this experience in the business world. Many times, we spend an inordinate time building a product and service. Then, we put it out in the real world. Sometimes it works. Most often, it fails. This is an expensive and inefficient way. Yet, companies continue to do it.
What has product development got to do with a play performed on the stage?
Think of the facade on the stage as the prototype of our product. We don't need the real stuff. We don't need a fully-functional unit for testing. The customers will ignore the deficiencies if the storyline is convincing and the facade is sufficient to match up. The actors know that the set is not real. Yet, they believe that it is the real stuff. Their belief makes us ignore that fact! The same applies to the person performing the testing of the prototype with a customer. She has to believe that the prototype is real and will do what the actual product would do.
A prototype can be anything depending on the final product/service. It is a menu card for a restaurant planning to test the introduction of few new dishes. It is a slide presentation run on full-screen mode on a mobile phone to look like an app. They are the facades. They are inexpensive, quick to build, test, modify and discard. They provide invaluable inputs for designing the final product.
Metrics:
Have you created a storyboard that involves the target customers?
Have you built a prototype that's only a facade of the real product?
Have you spent time training your team on the product idea, the objectives of the test, and the trial run?
Have you tested the product with real customers?
If the answer to all the above questions is yes, then give yourself a thumbs up.
Subodh
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