How to validate
a prototype ?

28/01/2021
Valider prototype
Once your prototype is completed, testing is the last step in the design sprint approach. So it's time to confront your prototype to your users. To do this, it is essential to organize and optimize this testing process and get feedback to iterate on the next version of your prototype.

We share our tips to help you through this important step and make the most of it.

1) What would you like to test ?

It is important to ask yourself this question very quickly because this step identifies your expectations.

Below is a non-exhaustive list of possible expectations: 

- Validation of the concept

The focus is not mainly on whether your idea is good or not, but rather to validate if your users understand your solution. Do they understand the interest of your product and its value proposition through your interfaces? 

- Validation of a feature 

Validating a feature is like measuring whether the user is able to perform the intended task as you designed it or if he seems confused and does not find the purpose of the feature.

- Validation of the navigation 

By working on naming and wording in addition to the interface structure, you can more easily test whether or not users find what they expect to find.
Scénarios de test

2) Prepare your test scenarios

Scenarios are essential for successful testing. When you want to put a prototype in the hands of a user, the goal is not to observe what he does with it but rather to give him a task to perform. 

You will therefore have to write these scenarios, which are short sentences that give the user a context and an objective.

Tests allow you to check if a user can use your solution without explanation and without being persuaded by someone else. Do not sell or try to persuade your users in your tests. 

When writing a scenario, be inspired by a real situation. For example: A home delivery application.

- A bad scenario would be to ask to your user to:  "Order sushi"

- While a good scenario should be to give a context:

"You might be home late tonight and you won't want to cook. You have a craving for sushi, but don't want to wait too long for delivery. You're also not willing to pay too much for the delivery, so depending on the situation, you may be tempted by something else." 
Personas

3) Target your testers

Knowing your users before designing your product and testing your prototype is crucial.For this it is recommended to create personas (detailed user profiles). Do not hesitate to list all the possible criteria that correspond to your users in terms of appearance and habits.

However, when you are at the beginning of the design of your prototype, you can ask for the opinion of your colleagues for example, but also, if necessary, of the different stakeholders. Indeed, if the success of your idea relies on third party partners, make sure you have their approval on the feasibility of your project.

The idea is to have your prototype tested by a large number of people in order to establish correlations between the feedbacks and group together the common feedbacks and thus validate a version that will correspond to their needs. 

Conclusion

As we have just seen above, the test phase should be organized according to your own expectations. A scenario should be in line with this, be impartial and describe a real context to help the user to project himself.

At MobileThinking, we can help you through the entire Design Sprint approach, from needs analysis to prototype design to user testing.

Do not hesitate to contact us to talk about your project.