Rapid Prototyping & Product Management

In this talk at Mind the Product in 2015, Tom Chi, who has practised rapid prototyping for over 15 years on everything from software to hardware, shares five lessons that apply directly to product management.

First, create a culture of learning instead of a culture of right and wrong, where a failure that brings back several key learnings is valued more than a success that teaches one; prototyping real experiences cuts short “guess-a-thons” built on conjecture. Second, stay in the medium. For people who build products, the real medium is not code or pixels but human behaviour in the real world, and for product managers it is managing uncertainty.

Third, optimise loop length, the time between asserting a conjecture and observing the actuals. Chi’s teams test with customers twice a week, sometimes with developers on speaker phone so small usability fixes take 15 minutes. Fourth, find the “eyes light up” or magic moments that your product is really about, such as Uber’s car arriving at the press of a button. Fifth, design early code for adaptability rather than scale, expecting most of it to be thrown away.