Carnegie Mellon Qatar ©2006 - 2011 Robert T. Monroe Course 70-446 Final Project Use the process, tools, and techniques we cover in this course to develop

Carnegie Mellon Qatar ©2006 - 2011 Robert T. Monroe Course 70-446

Final Project

• Use the process, tools, and techniques we cover in this course to develop an innovative new product or service concept to bring to market.– Phases 1-3 in detail, ‘lightweight’ phase 4

• Group project, 3-5 people in each group• Written proposal due during finals week (exact date TBD)

– 8-12 pages, single spaced, plus appendices• Proposal presentation on last day of class

– ~20 minutes per group for your presentation• Choose your own topic/area from:

– Any of the challenge problem scenarios– The vacation image capture scenario (or a variation thereof)– A company and market of your group’s choosing

• This option requires professor’s review and approval

• More details will be forthcoming on the wiki


Challenge Problem 4: Due In Class Tuesday March 15


Conceptualizing The Opportunity II:Prototyping 101

Robert Monroe

Innovative Product Development

March 10, 2011


By The End Of Class Today, You Should:


Phase 3 Overview: Conceptualizing The Opportunity

Phase 3Product Concepts

Phase 3Product Concepts

Gate2

Gate2

Gate3

Gate3

Phase 2 outputs:• Prioritized value opportunities• Detailed scenarios• Prioritized product attributes• Prioritized stakeholder list

Phase 3 activities:• Generating and screening product concepts• Prototyping

• Paper and pencil• Shape and form• Technological

• Packaging decisions• Detailed market research

Phase 3 outputs:• Single product concept with which to build detailed business case• Prototype(s) that illustrate path forward for this product or service• Detailed market analysis


Phase III Process Overview

VOA

RefinedPOG

ProductAttributes

Brainstorm lots of concepts

Quickeval

Select 3-10most promising

concepts

Select one concept

for Phase IV

DetailedEval:

DefineTest

Refine,Repeat


Prototyping In Phase III

• Prototyping begins in this phase– Simple visual and functional representations– “Skeletal” technology prototyping if and as necessary

• Focus is on evaluating:– Customer reactions - desirability and utility– Technical and production feasibility (and difficulty)– Fit in customer’s product and/or technology ecosystems– Identifying early ‘gotchas’

• Tasks:– Create storyboards to illustrate and refine concepts– Sketch out pencil-and-paper concepts– Identify key technical challenges, figure out a way to convince yourselves

that they can be addressed– Do necessary prototyping to understand key technical challenges


What is a Prototype?

• A prototype is an artifact (or set of artifacts) produced to evaluate or explore a design concept or challenge

• A prototype should not be:– Comprehensive

– Indefinitely scoped

– Release 1.0 of your product (or beta 1, for that matter)


Why Build Prototypes?

• Primary reason: To answer questions

• Secondary reasons: – To explore the space of possible solutions

– To identify unforseen problems and ‘gotchas’

– To sell your ideas to interested stakeholders


Prototyping Examples: Physical Mockups


Prototyping Examples: iPhone Apps

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SOeMA3DUEs• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06AgimMu4Ok


Prototyping Example: Website Wireframe Mockup


Why Limit Your Prototyping?

• Prototyping is expensive (time, money, attention)

• Prototyping is a means to an end, not an end in itself

• Temptation to turn the protype into the real thing– This is remarkably hard to resist…


From Concept Ideas To Prototype

Number ofconceptsunderconsideration

Time

Fidelity ofconceptsunderconsideration

“Real” prototypingbegins around thispart of the graph

Phase III End

Phase III Beginning


What Kinds of Questions?

• Does your concept hit the mark with target market?– Is it useful, usable, and desirable?

• Will the product or service solve the problem identified?

• Is it feasible to produce the product or service concept?– At all?– Within time and budget constraints?

• Will the proposed solution fit into the target tech ecosystem?– Is the assessment of the tech ecosystem on target?– Where are the hidden landmines?

• What else?


Unknowns Drive Prototyping Strategy And Tactics

• General strategy:– Figure out what you don’t know but should

– Prioritize issues and identify cascading implications

– Will building a prototype help you get the answers you need?• Is there a quicker, cheaper, or easier way to get the answers? Then do

it.

– Prototype sufficiently to learn what you need to proceed

• Specific tactics– Focus on the hard problems first

– Prototype no more than necessary


Solution Space

Prototyping As Exploration

• Fun, enlightening, useful• … but it’s easy to spend way too much time doing this

• Generally best done with pencil, paper, whiteboards


Prototyping To Find ‘Gotchas’

Kaboom!


Prototypes As A Sales Tool

• Selling a new product concept can be difficult– To your (target) customers

– To stakeholders within your own company

• Prototyping can help sell to external stakeholders

• Prototyping can help sell to internal stakeholders


Match Prototyping Tools and Techniques To Problem

• Pencil, paper, whiteboards– Great for experimenting with

general concepts

– Good for rapid iteration and feedback

– Not very good for identifying subtle tech mismatches

• Photoshop and HTML– Powerful visual mock-ups

– Less iterative than paper and pencil

– More difficult and expensive than paper and pencil

• Storyboards– Walk through a sequence of

actions and interactions to understand use cases in detail

• Rapid physical mock-ups– Foam blocks, wood, 3-D printers

– Focus on form factor, ergonomics, aesthetics, fit

• Skeletal technical prototyping– Build selected elements ‘just

enough’ to answer questions

– Focus on technology fit


Prototyping Exercise


Product Opportunity Gap

• Over the past decade consumers have become more dependent on web-based retailers and mobile service providers.

• To prevent fraud, web retailers and mobile service providers need to authenticate that the customer making a purchase is who he or she claims to be.

• The standard way that web providers authenticate customers is requiring a userid and password to login.

• Consumers now need to manage many different passwords for many different websites, creating a hassle for consumers and a security problem for both consumers and web-based businesses.


Identified Value Opportunities

LegendCurrent:Desired:


Identified Product Attributes

• Simplifies authentication process for consumers– Process of authenticating to a specific website or mobile service– Process of managing authentication information across sites and services

• Provides robust authentication – not easily spoofed• Reduces security threats from consumer confusion, inattention,

and inability to remember numerous pwd’s• Simple to use with little or no training• Difficult to use incorrectly• Provides customers clear feedback that it is working• Standard usage across most websites and mobile services• Integrates with existing web and 3G technology infrastructure


Early Conceptualization Example

• Provide a small keychain-sized device that stores userid and passwords for user-selected websites. – Device stores userid/password combos that it provides to the browser

on the computer to which it is connected. – Device can connect to computer using bluetooth, IR, or USB. – Userid/Passwords stored in an encrypted format on the device– Fingerprint is required to decrypt device contents or send

userid/password combo to browser

• Note: first product concept only works with computer browsers. An interesting next step is to figure out how to adapt this to work with other mobile devices


Mid-Fidelity Conceptualization

Example user scenario:• Mary uses three different online financial services – credit card, checking, and

brokerage. • She uses different password/id combos at each one to improve security but she has a

hard time remembering them. • When she sits down to pay her bills and reconcile her accounts each month she sets her

key-chain id next to her computer and presses her thumb on the thumbprint pad. • Her thumbpress turns the device on, which sends a bluetooth signal to her pc. • The software on her pc recognizes the signal and alerts her browser to query the device

whenever a login screen pops-up. • The device provides the userid/password for each of her online financial sites• After 15 minutes without a query from the pc, the device turns itself off

Example flowchart:

Fingerprint unlocksdevice

Login screen recognizedUserid/pwd sent to browser

Banking application acceptsuserid/pwd, access granted


Today’s Exercise – Develop A Prototyping Strategy

• What are the most important unknowns with this concept? Identify, prioritize, and order them

• Which of these unknowns should we investigate through prototyping? Why?– Which should we investigate with other techniques?

• Describe the prototyping strategy you recommend we employ to get each of these answer(s)? – Will one prototype address all of the issues identified? – If not, how many prototypes should we build? – What are the costs of doing so? Can they be amortized?


Challenge Problem #5: Due In Class Thurs. March 17


References

[CE09] Robert G. Cooper and Scott Edgett, Successful Product Innovation, Product Development Institute, 2009, ISBN: 978-1-4392-4918-5.

[CV02] Jonathan Cagan and Craig M. Vogel, Creating Breakthrough Products, Prentice Hall, 2002, ISBN: 0-13-969694-6.

[KL01] Tom Kelly with Jonathan Littman, The Art of Innovation, Doubleday, 2001 ISBN: 0-385-49984-1.

[SSD09] David Silverstein, Philip Samuel, Neil DeCarlo, The Innovator’s Toolkit, John Wiley and Sons, 2009, ISBN: 978-0-470-34535-1.

Documents

Carnegie Mellon Qatar ©2006 - 2011 Robert T. Monroe Course 70-446 Final Project Use the process, tools, and techniques we cover in this course to develop