Beyond Traditional Prototypes: Different Ways to Test an Idea

Not every product idea needs to be tested with a fully interactive prototype.

Depending on what a team wants to learn, it may be faster and more effective to simulate a capability, show the experience through a video or use a familiar metaphor to help users understand a new concept.

The choice of method should be driven by the assumption being tested.

Wizard of Oz Prototyping

Wizard of Oz prototyping allows teams to test an experience before the underlying technology has been built.

The user interacts with what appears to be a functioning product, but some or all of the system’s responses are actually generated manually behind the scenes.

For example, a team developing an AI assistant might create a simple chat interface while a person manually produces the responses that users believe are being generated automatically.

This allows the team to test important questions before investing in complex technology:

• Do users understand the experience?
• Will they use the proposed capability?
• What do they expect the system to do?
• What types of requests do they make?
• Do they trust the responses?

This technique can be particularly valuable for testing new AI products, automated services and complex interactions where building the underlying technology would be expensive.

However, researchers should carefully consider transparency and ethics when users are not initially told that a human is operating the system. Participants should normally be appropriately debriefed after the research.

The main limitation is that a manually simulated experience may perform differently from the eventual technology. Teams must therefore avoid creating expectations that the real product cannot meet.

 

Concept Videos

Sometimes the easiest way to make a future product experience tangible is to show it.

A concept video or video prototype demonstrates how a proposed product might work in a realistic scenario, even when the underlying technology does not yet exist.

This can help teams explore:

• Whether users understand the proposition
• Whether the experience appears valuable
• How a product might fit into someone’s daily life
• Reactions to a future capability
• Different product concepts before building prototypes

Concept videos can be particularly useful for products involving hardware, AI, emerging technology or complex ecosystems that are difficult to prototype quickly.

However, a concept video demonstrates a carefully constructed scenario rather than real product behaviour. Positive reactions should therefore be treated as evidence of interest, not proof that people will actually use the product.

Using Metaphors to Explain New Experiences

Metaphors help people understand unfamiliar products by connecting them with concepts they already know.

The original computer “desktop”, with files, folders and a waste bin, is a classic example. It helped users understand an unfamiliar digital environment through concepts borrowed from the physical world.

Metaphors can be particularly useful when introducing new interaction models or technologies.

For example, describing an AI system as a “copilot” immediately suggests a particular relationship: the technology assists the user rather than completely replacing them.

But metaphors also influence expectations.

If the metaphor suggests capabilities that the product does not actually have, users may misunderstand how the system works. Teams should therefore test not only whether a metaphor makes a concept easier to understand, but also whether it creates the right mental model.

Choose the Prototype Based on What You Need to Learn

There is no universally “best” prototyping technique.

A wireframe might be enough to test information architecture. A clickable prototype might be used to test a workflow. A Wizard of Oz experiment might test whether users value an automated capability. A concept video might explore reactions to a future experience.

The important question is:

What is the riskiest assumption we need to test, and what is the fastest credible way to test it?

This is where prototyping connects directly with continuous discovery.

The purpose of a prototype is not necessarily to represent what the final product will look like. Its purpose is to create an experience sufficient to generate evidence.

The best prototype is therefore not always the most realistic one.

It is the simplest prototype that helps you learn what you need to know before making a bigger investment.