It's time to get designing. A design-driven prototype offering is one that is holistic, total solution oriented and visual. If its a software or Web solution it should be a working prototype. If it is a services business it should be a completely documented, thought out and workflowed solution. If it is a physical product offering then you need real prototype products of clothing samples or food examples or engine models.
The Design-driven approach is one which attempts to design the entire business from the outset - modeling early customer needs, early customer demographics, market dynamics and influences, competitor positioning and your product offering at the centre of all of this. Think 3D and behave like a designer, attempting to visualize a true product within market prototype, either via drawings, physical models or computer graphics.
"Design is rapidly moving from posters and toasters to include processes, systems, and organizations. Design is the accelerator for the company car, the power train for sustainable profits. Design drives innovation, innovation powers brand, brand builds loyalty, and loyalty sustains profits. If you want long-term profits, don't start with technology—start with design.
For businesses to bottle the kind of experiences that rivet minds and run away with hearts, not just one time but over and over, they'll need to do more than hire designers. They'll need to be designers. They'll need to think like designers, feel like designers, work like designers. The narrow-gauge mindset of the past is insufficient for today's wicked problems. We can no longer play the music as written. Instead, we have to invent a whole new scale. So get Design-driven."
The more physical you get the better and see of you can introduce game theory. Try and describe your market entry phase as a simulated game, 3rd position yourself, and watch yourself play out the game. Visualize a market stall with you and product at the centre, competitor stalls all around and early customers passing by. Have your friends and family join in. Play it out - feel the market, haggle on pricing, compare to the competition, have customers use/try out your offering versus others and put yourself in their shows; what are their likes and dislikes.
See how the dynamics play out and help it to shape, in a virtual (but as real as possible) sense, your early prototype product feedback, early market entry tactics and early customer response to your offering versus the competition, you pricing and their value equation.
Be as 'out of the box' as possible when simulating your market entry phase and developing your company and product/service prototype and do it as COST EFFECTIVELY as possible. Be resourceful. And use friends and family as intimately as you can so you have ideally 10-15 relevant people helping you shape and design this prototype offering.
Share
