When initiating the building of a marketplace application from scratch, it is important to break down the whole process to stages and ensure each step ensures the stability of your final product. Prototypes are important in new product development processes. The aim is to discover new opportunities and refine old solutions.

Prototype development is a valuable tool and having a highly experienced team of engineers can put your product ideas into reality in no time.  The initial stages of product development are long and complicated till a concept design to prototype development.

Businesses should invest their resources in prototypes to help them predict how well the product fairs in the real world. It is easier to describe a product’s production worth with something solid and real to show the people.

Importance Of Prototype Development Process

The process gives the business the opportunity to

  1. Discover the errors in the original product they are developing: Prototypes create product ideas in a controlled space while establishing important details to fully understand the design needs using proof of concept.
  2. Solve product design issues that they discover: A well-functioning prototype is used to test design repetitions and perfect the final products’ performance. Issues discovered should be solved and corrected before releasing the final product. This reduces business risk.
  3. Know the supply chain for the components required: Fast tooling and customized low-volume production helps to bridge the gap between prototype and production. It also makes the business’ product move faster in the market at a reasonable price.
  4. Verify that the product design actually works: Engineering prototypes matching the final product makes verifying, designing and manufacturing easier before making expensive investments on components of production.
  5. It also gives the business the opportunity to act upon the feedback on the product from the target market: Visual presentation of the product ideas allows engineers to share their ideas with their target market, colleagues and clients. This enables actionable and clear feedback.
  6. Come up with the price per unit of the product.

The Prototype Development Process

1. Create A Bill Of Materials

In the prototype development process, a bill of materials is a comprehensive list of components required to come up with a product according to the distinctive and non-distinctive problems the customers experience. It also includes the places to find each component and how to combine them to come up with the product.  By creating a bill of materials, the business is able to have an idea of how much capital it will need to produce the product.

2. Technical Development

The second stage is about coming up with the technology and the prototype that works towards accomplishing the business visualization of the idea to satisfy the customers’ needs. The stage should be able to verify that the idea works and revolves around satisfying the customers’ needs. The business can also examine the prototype and give samples to its target market to start getting feedback. This helps fix any problems and errors before the product is in production which is relatively cheap for the business.

3. Research And Innovation

The prototype is developed into something that looks like the finished product in this stage. To create a product which is viable to mass produce, functionality is a key factor in the process. Again, the business should test the prototype and demonstrate how it works to the target market to obtain valuable feedback before taking the product into production.

Research stages involve conducting an in-depth market analysis. The business should be able to figure out the exclusivity of their product, their consumers’ behavior, any avoidable risks they can wave ‘bye’ to by using the engineers’ solution and what competitors have to offer.

4. Design For Manufacture

Initiate the creative process according to the feedback obtained from the previous stages. Take a rough foretaste at how the marketplace project will look and work like. The business might have the design for manufacture looking a bit different from the prototype in stage three because this prototype will consider:

  • The production speeds
  • The supply chain the business will be working with
  • How the business will manufacture the products
  • The cost of the components and production

The reaction to this new prototype is tested with the target market and the result is a product that’s fully improved for mass production. Without this stage, a business can run the risk of underestimating costs, and noticing this too late may lead to unexpected sourcing issues.

5. First Units Off The Assembly Line

In this stage, the business will probably have completed its financing and have a marketing and public relation strategy in place to reach its target market. Before releasing the product to the market, the business should ensure it has fixed all the bugs, observed in the beta-version release. It is also advisable for the business products to appear on the list of products on AppStore and Google Play.

The business can also opt to lead an active marketing campaign for the products. It’s recommended to create a website for the business’ new product and spread the word about it across all relevant channel.

Commercial & Office Prototyping

Prototyping technical capabilities are well suited for commercial and office automation equipment (OA products) manufacturers with components manufactured to your exact specifications. The prototype development will faithfully represent the attributes of the end-product, including dimensional accuracy for assembling mating parts, checking design errors and hidden dimensional differences and tolerances.

Digital & Appliances Prototyping

In the competitive consumer products field, professional designers are focused on providing the best quality prototyping in the industry on both time and cost. creates high-quality visual presentation models virtually identical to the real products. These prototyped models are ideal for use in focus groups, trade shows, and other sales and marketing activities.

These are the steps to pave through in order to create a full-fledged, self-sufficient product. As you can see the role of the prototype in product development requires lots of points of view to consider in order to collect new ideas.

  • We get introduced to the issue our customer is trying to solve and the industry our client is engaged in.
  • The next thing is we together do the research and agree upon a tech solution for a certain feature or the entire solution.
  • We create clickable wireframes and prototypes of your product to take a look at it in real life.
  • We try to cooperate the most with our customer at this stage. It’s a part where a lot of changes related to the technology choice and/or business point of view can be made.

Getting the perfect team that reacts quickly to any project development requirements in days will put your product in the market within days. Engineers operate one-stop support from prototype machining to surface finishing. Quickly simulate products during all phases of the design process for visual evaluation of features, shape, functionality and overall look and feel.

If the project is curated wisely from the very beginning, there’re no doubts that it can turn to be a true phenomenon on the market. Professional prototype product development designers are always open to discuss prototyping in product development and advise you on prototyping process steps for the marketplace product.