Especially when you’re alerted to the potential pitfalls behind the process. Here are Yeti’s top five common ones to avoid:
1: Perfectionism
Mockups aren’t meant to be the perfect realization of a product:
2: Over-Engineering
It can be easy to lose the core design concept behind a cloud of minor tweaks:
3: Too Many Cooks
4: Forgetting to Test It
You need to actually verify that you’re headed in the right direction once you have a supposedly functional mockup at the ready. Keep the end goal in sight, even when you think you’re finished.
5: Missing the Deadline
A prototype, by definition, is an untested experiment. You don’t know how long you’ll need to work on it, so you might find the deadlines slipping past. Keep a careful eye out. As the paper puts it, “Often, it’s helpful to timebox your work and stay true to deadlines, keeping the exercise of prototyping focused and valuable.” Download the entire paper for a more comprehensive overview, but as long as you keep these five tips in mind, you should be able to tip-toe through your prototyping phase while staying on target.
