{"id":4432,"date":"2016-12-21T15:47:44","date_gmt":"2016-12-21T15:47:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/?p=4432"},"modified":"2023-02-09T16:49:25","modified_gmt":"2023-02-09T16:49:25","slug":"rapid-prototyping-digital-products","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/blog\/rapid-prototyping-digital-products\/","title":{"rendered":"Your New Favorite Prototyping Hack: Just Use Your Competitor&#8217;s App"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>This is a guest post by David Bailey, Entrepreneur in Residence at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.downingventures.com\">Downing Ventures<\/a> in London.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Before I launched my startup, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.3kindsofice.com\">3 Kinds of Ice<\/a>, I spent a couple of weeks testing my idea with potential customers, using a method called paper prototyping.<br><br><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/alistapart.com\/article\/paperprototyping\">Paper prototyping<\/a> is a useful DIY shortcut for testing early product concepts. Instead of building a real app first and getting it wrong, you draw out the user interface of your potential app and test the way users interact with it.\u00a0It\u2019s cheap and helps you validate your\u00a0product idea fast.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"lyte-wrapper\" style=\"width:1280px;max-width:100%;margin:5px auto;\"><div class=\"lyMe hidef\" id=\"WYL_B7M0fVXdovM\"><div id=\"lyte_B7M0fVXdovM\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-youtube-lyte\/lyteCache.php?origThumbUrl=%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FB7M0fVXdovM%2Fmaxresdefault.jpg\" class=\"pL\"><div class=\"tC\"><div class=\"tT\"><\/div><\/div><div class=\"play\"><\/div><div class=\"ctrl\"><div class=\"Lctrl\"><\/div><div class=\"Rctrl\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><noscript><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/B7M0fVXdovM\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-youtube-lyte\/lyteCache.php?origThumbUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FB7M0fVXdovM%2F0.jpg\" alt=\"YouTube video thumbnail\" width=\"1280\" height=\"700\" \/><br \/>Watch this video on YouTube<\/a><\/noscript><\/div><\/div><div class=\"lL\" style=\"max-width:100%;width:1280px;margin:5px auto;\"><\/div><figcaption><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s as simple and low-cost as <a href=\"http:\/\/usabilitygeek.com\/paper-prototyping-as-a-usability-testing-technique\/\">usability testing<\/a> gets. &nbsp;Or so I thought until one afternoon, when I unexpectedly stumbled on something even better: You can put in a lot less work by doing usability&nbsp;testing on your competitor\u2019s app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-what-competitor-apps-tell-you-that-paper-prototypes-don-t\">What competitor apps tell you that paper prototypes don\u2019t<\/h2>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/yplan-600x400.jpg\" alt=\"yplan\" class=\"wp-image-4434\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Admittedly, this came out of a moment of pure improvisation. I had left my stack of paper prototypes at home and had to think of something fast. <\/span><br><br><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But it turns out that testing my competitor\u2019s product as if it were my own product idea was the best idea I\u2019d never thought of.<\/span><br><br><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">YPlan is <a href=\"http:\/\/venturebeat.com\/2016\/02\/08\/event-ticketing-startup-yplan-is-cutting-30-of-its-workforce-as-it-scales-back-u-s-operations\/\">an event booking app<\/a> that helps users browse and book seats at events happening near them that night. The product I was planning was in the same space, \u00a0so I had spent a lot of time combing through the app building a set of assumptions. I thought I knew what did and didn\u2019t work with their customers. <\/span><br><br><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But watching my potential customers interact with my competitor\u2019s app in front of me shattered those assumptions. <\/span><br><br><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Right away, the user tester seemed more impressed by the app\u2019s design than I had ever been. She scrolled down the list of events, clicking in and out of them to figure out how they fit together.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"579\" height=\"493\" src=\"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/yplan-again.png\" alt=\"YPlan Screenshot\" class=\"wp-image-4436\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Then something interesting happened: When I asked her to pick an event she would like to attend, she scrolled down the list without stopping to look at the headlines. I realized that she wasn\u2019t looking at headlines or any copy at all. <\/span><br><br><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">She was focusing instead on featured images to guide her decision. <\/span><br><br><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">She stopped at a \u00a0photo of a pizza with a glass of champagne, explaining that it grabbed her attention because \u201cpizza and champagne don\u2019t often go together.\u201d <\/span><br><br><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Later she scrolled right past a photo of another event featuring an image of an empty restaurant because \u201cwho wants to go to an empty restaurant?\u201d<\/span><br><br><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was the images that were unusual or exciting that seemed to resonate with her. This little observation ended up forming the core of my product.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/prototype-600x418.jpg\" alt=\"Paper Prototype\" class=\"wp-image-4435\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-paper-prototypes-and-testing-competitors-go-together-well\">Paper prototypes and testing competitors go together well<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thanks to my user testers, I knew exactly what to invest in to launch my own app, <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.3kindsofice.com\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">3 Kinds of Ice<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. <\/span><br><br><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I focused on curating\u00a0unusual and exciting events, knowing how much my users valued them. I also hired a content team to shoot professional videos and images and create full-screen \u201cstorybooks\u201d that would highlight the uniqueness of each experience.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed aligncenter is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">4 dishes that look like other things <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/08Rz9kTZT4\">https:\/\/t.co\/08Rz9kTZT4<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/lovelondon?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#lovelondon<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/londonrestaurants?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#londonrestaurants<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/londonfood?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#londonfood<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/b5Ue0r3EdB\">pic.twitter.com\/b5Ue0r3EdB<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Cheeky Weekend (@cheekyweekends) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/cheekyweekends\/status\/691569786602536960?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">January 25, 2016<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Paper prototypes are convenient, but they are missing one thing: real content. After all, showing a user tester a series of blank boxes and sketches means they have to fill in important blanks with their imagination.<\/span><br><br><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That means you have blanks to fill in too. What kind of visuals and copy will potential users actually respond well to? What functionality do they value in the products they currently use? Paper prototyping helps you see how users interact with flows and concepts, but it leaves a lot of other questions unanswered. <\/span><br><br><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Don\u2019t wait to find out. You can get a head start on building a better product\u00a0by mining your competitor\u2019s product &#8211; the one that already exists. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a guest post by David Bailey, Entrepreneur in Residence at Downing Ventures in London.&nbsp; Before I launched my startup, 3 Kinds of Ice, I spent a couple of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":4437,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[158,196],"pp_uni_tag":[],"class_list":["post-4432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-product-management-best-practice","tag-product-development","tag-prototyping"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.4 (Yoast SEO v27.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Best Rapid Prototyping Hack? Just Use Your Competitor&#039;s App<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The fastest, cheapest way to discover user insights? Run usability testing sessions using your competitors&#039; products. What comes back will surprise you.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/blog\/rapid-prototyping-digital-products\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Your New Fave Prototyping Hack: Just Use Your Competitor&#039;s App\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Why make an app from scratch when you can just test your competitors&#039; apps instead...for free?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/blog\/rapid-prototyping-digital-products\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"ProdPad\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ProdPad\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-12-21T15:47:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-02-09T16:49:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Default-Social-Share-Image-1.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2400\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1260\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David Bailey\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Your New Fave Prototyping Hack: Just Use Your Competitor&#039;s App\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"Why make an app from scratch when you can just test your competitors&#039; apps instead...for free?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/pexels-1.jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@prodpad\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@prodpad\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"David Bailey\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Best Rapid Prototyping Hack? 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