Pretotyping – Making sure that you are building the right ‘it’

The tag line says it all –  “Make sure your building the right ‘it’ before you build it right.”

Pretotyping differs from prototyping in one important respect. The main objective of prototyping is to answer questions related to building the product: Can we build it? Will it work as expected? How cheaply can we build it? How fast can we make it? The main objective of pretotyping is to answer questions about the product’s appeal and usage: Would people be interested in it? Will they use it as expected? Will they continue to use it? …

How do you make sure that you are building the right “it”? This is much harder than you imagine.