What do Slack, Airbnb, Instagram, and other industry giants have in common? They all started with a simple prototype and evolved into some of the most successful products we know today.
When the founders of Airbnb, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, couldn't afford to pay rent back in 2007 in San Francisco, they decided to rent out air mattresses in their apartment and provide homemade breakfast in the morning to make ends meet. Needless to say, it was successful. Seeing the attention their idea was getting, they built a simple website prototype to test the idea of people paying to stay in a stranger's home.
A simple prototype quickly evolved into a successful web application in 2008. The site was officially launched, and the hotel industry was shocked by this innovative and fresh business model. Airbnb, which now operates worldwide, offers millions of listings in over 220 countries, and guests have checked into Airbnb more than 300 million times.
1. So what is prototyping in software development?
Even if you know what product you want and what it will look like, chances are the development and steps to achieve it are not laid out in every detail. And even if it was, the product requirements are likely to change in the development process to have it address the users' actual needs based on their feedback.
So how do you know what your users actually need and wish to see? This is where prototyping in software development comes into play. A prototype is a working software model that may not exactly represent the final product and initially has limited functionalities, thus using feedback from your target audience continuously to make changes until the final product is developed that addresses their needs.
Prototyping helps to strategize and solidify each development step, helping both the development team and all stakeholders on the client's side envision what the product will look like. By creating a prototype, developers showcase the core functionalities and user interface of the software, giving clients a clearer idea of what to expect.
And most importantly prototyping helps generate quick ideas, test them on target users, get feedback on what works and what does not, and improve, creating a repeated cycle. Generally, It's a lot easier and more affordable to make fixes at an early stage of development.
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