Prototyping and user testing is the best way to create successful products, but many designers skip this important step and use gut instinct instead. By explaining the goals and methodologies behind prototyping—and demonstrating how to prototype for both physical and digital products—this practical guide helps beginning and intermediate designers become more comfortable with creating and testing prototypes early and often in the process.

Author Kathryn McElroy explains various prototyping methods, from fast and dirty to high fidelity and refined, and reveals ways to test your prototypes with users. You’ll gain valuable insights for improving your product, whether it’s a smartphone app or a new electronic gadget.

• Learn similarities and differences between prototyping for physical and digital products
• Know what fidelity level is needed for different prototypes
• Get best practices for prototyping in a variety of mediums, and choose which prototyping software or components to use
• Learn electronics prototyping basics and resources for getting started
• Write basic pseudocode and translate it into usable code for Arduino
• Conduct user tests to gain insights from prototypes

Who Should Read This Book

The ideal reader of this book is someone who’s eager to improve their design process. It’s geared toward beginning and intermediate designers, and is especially relevant for readers who are shifting careers into product design (either physical or software). However, it applies to many other people.

You might have a DIY project that you think is great, but want to find a way to test it before you invest too much time or money into scaling or selling it. You might be a product designer who knows that you should prototype, but you don’t know how to incorporate it into your current workflow or Agile team. You could be interested in user testing and backing up your design decisions with data in order to gain influence with your business stakeholders.

Prototyping is a formalized version of continual learning. Readers with an open mind, and the desire to improve their skill and craft, will benefit the most from this book. I suggest you be as open to improving yourself as you are with improving your product experience.

This book will help you build broad, actionable skills, but it will not include how-tos on specific software. If you’re looking for tutorials, there are plenty of online videos with specific lessons on new software. Software comes and goes, and as soon as a book is printed, it’s immediately out of date! This book will give you a good foundation in prototyping so that you’ll feel comfortable applying it to whichever software you’re most comfortable using. Whether that’s Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, Sketch, InVision, or Axure, you’ll leave this book with the ability to think through your idea in a way that you can successfully prototype.

About the Author

Kathryn McElroy is an Advisory Designer for the IBM Mobile Innovation Lab, in Austin, Texas. She is an award-winning designer and photographer, and is passionate about near-future technology and building electronics and smart objects. She has published tutorials and articles about her projects in Make Magazine, Fast Company, and Timeout New York, and she regularly speaks about design thinking, prototyping, and user experience design.