Design Thinking: Prototype and Test

One of the first signs that I had started imbibing IFA training was when I started unconsciously applying design thinking approach to problems I face outside of IFA’s challenge/ Hackathon. Every time I catch myself doing that, a wry smile comes on my face. Good feeling, I tell you.

The idea we zoned in on is a service. We had decided to model it as a website that allows donors/ sponsors/ partners to find, fund and track the progress of a child in school or help provide better learning resources/ infrastructure for a school. Time to create a prototype

Fourth Pit Stop - Prototype

A prototype is a quick throwaway that allows the team to test the idea. It is prime opportunity to be immersed in the idea and its execution. At this point, niggling side issues we hadn’t considered started cropping up.

Pit stop Check 1: Choosing a Prototyping Tool

We had a session of testing and trying out several prototyping tools – free, fremium, or free for a trial period. Each tool is geared towards a certain category of idea e.g., a site builder does not work well for prototyping physical products. A few tools are listed below.

• Pen and Paper

• Mural

• Figma

• Fluid

• Balsamiq Cloud

• Marvel

• Protio.io

• Wix (or any free site builder)

• LucidChart

• Google Drive Tools (Slides, Sheets, Docs)

• Boords

• Storybaorder

• Sketchup

• 3-D Slash

• TinkerCad

• 3D-Crafter

We had to test a few of them and decide on one. Two questions guided our choice

• Did anyone in the group have significant expertise with any of the tools

• Does the tool have a smooth learning curve?

As I had significant expertise with Balsamiq, we went with that.

Pit stop Check 2: Prototyping and Details

Remember those niggling details. One of them -the website prototype needed a name. We brainstormed and came up with different names such as Childsponsor, EdSponsor etc. We settled on EdSponsor. And met the next hurdle - How best to present information and organize the features. We collaborated on this and was able to complete the prototype.

The key features included are:

Sign up, sign in, view your beneficiaries, track their performances, view kids/schools in need, payment and payment confirmation page.

At the end of this phase, we had both a paper prototype and an interactive Balsamiq prototype (exported as PDF for easy sharing)

Fifth Pit Stop - Testing

In the final session, we had had to share our prototype with members of other hackathon teams for testing. And most importantly feedback.

• We keenly observed how intuitive interacting with the prototype was

• Possible bottlenecks

The feedback was immense. For example, our login form was tedious. Most of the information could be updated in the profile later. The feedback was incorporated and we prepared for pitch day.

Almost there! See you at the finish line.