Rapid Prototyping Your Product Before You Build It

Hello members and subscribers! The eleventh Moonshots Master episode is here and we are diving into Entrepreneurship and Rapid Prototyping!!

Rapidly getting us into the mindset of trying and testing, we start with Walt Disney as he discusses how to use prototyping to find success. We then hear from the genius of Dyson, Sir James Dyson, who reflects on how the journey to innovation takes time. We are fully inspired after hearing Tom Wujec’s breakdown on how digital and physical methods of building products are uniting into the Future of Making.

Now we’re ready to prototype, let’s learn from Whittlesea Tech School as they help inform what makes a prototype different to a product, and a description of what exactly a prototype is. We revisit Sir James Dyson again, as he speaks on the importance of prototypes to prove your technology works, as well as how to embrace and track failures.

In our final chapter, we dig into the Sprint process with Jake Knapp, who breaks down how to begin prototyping with your team today. We also hear from Angus Deveson from Maker's Muse as he discusses how to create and build physical prototypes that you should test to failure. We end our deep dive into rapid prototyping with the superstar himself, Tom Chi, who relives a story on iterating and stress testing any business model, and how it is the true essence of entrepreneurship.

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Mike Parsons: Hello, and welcome to the moonshots master series. It's episode 11. I'm your co-host Mike Parsons. And as always, I'm joined by the most rapid man himself. Mr. Mark Pearson, Freeland. Good morning, mark. That's where I 

[00:00:14] Mark Pearson Freeland: might today. In episode 11, we're getting into something that's not only pretty rapid, but it's also very tried and tested and really, truly works Mike today.

[00:00:26] We're getting into pretty interesting topics that you and I just love to do, and that's diving into the entrepreneurship bucket. Focus on rapid prototype. 

[00:00:38] Mike Parsons: Rapid prototyping. Merck is something that is close to my heart. I remember in fact being shown how to do rapid prototyping by one of the superstars that we're actually going to have in this show.

[00:00:51] And it was like an aha moment for working out. If your product idea is any good at all, and here's the kicker mark, [00:01:00] you can do that without building the entire product. It feels like such a cheat, right? Yeah, 

[00:01:07] Mark Pearson Freeland: it does. It feels like a cheat from getting to a point of having an idea on, let's say the back of a napkin spending millions of dollars to build it, to then put it into the store shelves and for it to fail.

[00:01:21] Instead, you can just do a little bit of prototyping, bit of testing and whether or not to launch it or make amends. It does feel like you're almost time-tracking. And you can see what's going to happen to 

[00:01:33] Mike Parsons: it before you launch it. That's a great way of talking about it. The thing for me is that I wanna make the case for rapid prototyping and you mentioned, going, into the future.

[00:01:48] A lot of people I have made and myself included here I'm no better than anybody else of having assumed that their idea was great.[00:02:00] And let's be honest, it's easy to get a bit carried away with your own business or product idea. And invariably. When you bring this to consumers, the reality is inversed the reality of all of your excitement, optimism, and, grand visions turns out to be that the customer just doesn't give.

[00:02:23] Ah, you know what, in fact the premise of rapid prototyping is deeply connected to the lean startup practice and the author of lean startup. And he's name is Eric Reese. He wrote the book because he testified to the mistake he made. He spent five years and $40 million building a product that nobody wants.

[00:02:48] And he talked about the absence of testing. The absence of rapid prototyping is something that he went on to learn is what he should have done. It's why he created lean startup and lean startup has been a massive success for him. So [00:03:00] good on him. My point here is we are way too often victims of wishful thinking.

[00:03:08] When we come with new ideas, new entrepreneurial thoughts, visions. However we can all get through that. If we embrace rapid prototyping, if we test our ideas in a lightweight form early on, not only will you test the idea and work out if it's any good, you'll make it better. That is my promise mark of what we're going to do together in this show.

[00:03:31] What do you think? 

[00:03:32] Mark Pearson Freeland: That is a good proposition there, Mike. So it's not only coming to terms with that painful experience of learning that your customers don't really like your product. How do we get over that pain, but also understanding the value that can come from it. You make the amends, you launch it and it gets better.

[00:03:55] I'm ready for that master series. This is a topic close to you. And I [00:04:00] we've done this before in our careers. It's certainly something that I think would be. Enjoy doing so where do we start? 

[00:04:06] Mike Parsons: I think what we're going to do is paint a huge picture of just how rapid prototyping really does lay behind some of the greats.

[00:04:17] Whether you talk about Thomas Edison and the light bulb famously did 10,000 prototypes. Whether we talk about some of the most cutting edge digital makers of today, every body. He's making product, particularly those making physical product is using rapid prototyping. So let's go to one of the granddaddies of them all.

[00:04:39] Let's go to Walt Disney and listened to how rapid prototyping was part of his success. The old 

[00:04:47] Walt Disney: saying these are the things that dreams are made of Mike well applied to these scale models. And the drawings and the blueprints. So at [00:05:00] least when we dream up new ideas for Disneyland, they first take shape and form in such preliminary studies.

[00:05:07] As this here at the studio, we get many letters from art students and from people who are just interested in art. Some of these letters ask questions that deserve a more detailed answer than could be given in a written reply. And so from time to time, we're going to devote an entire program to answering a few of these questions

[00:05:27] and our feature production of Bambi, the characters were developed by drawing from. Our artist's made thousands of actions, sketches, catching, every pose and characteristic attitude and the production of lady and the tramp. This technique of humanized animal characters reaches a point of near perfection.

[00:05:50] We first tried this approach to humanized animal animation in one of our early silly symphonies or this project. We brought some kittens into the studio and [00:06:00] let them play and roll about as they pleased while the artists made sketches and collected ideas for the kitten story. The result of this experiment was the academy award winner of the year, 1935 and the three orphan.

[00:06:15] Mark Pearson Freeland: Straight off the bat, Mike, you improve that testing, prototyping, gradually improving designs. And so on over that period, it can get you an academy award. I think that already is making the case of doing this testing. Don't you think? 

[00:06:34] Mike Parsons: Yeah. And I think when I hear like great site Disney, we're doing this.

[00:06:39] It just, it's a bit of a reveal. Isn't it? It's oh, they're creating these models. They're testing, they're learning, they're refining. It makes so much sense. You almost have this division of the craftsman polishing away, making a prototype testing polishing again. This truly is something it's not brand new.

[00:06:59] It's [00:07:00] been around for ages. And I think what we should do before we jump into the modern day. Where we look at some more recent examples of people who are using rapid prototyping. I'll tell you this, somebody else who's always crafting away, improving the work they do, and themselves mark. And that is our members and our subscribers.

[00:07:26] I think we deserve to acknowledge their contribution, maybe a tip of the hat, 

[00:07:31] Mark Pearson Freeland: mark that's right. A tip of the hat and a real. Celebration of all the prototyping that you guys might be up to in your, in the rest of your time, aside from listening to the moonshots master 

[00:07:43] Mike Parsons: series. So maybe mark they're prototyping while they listened to the show.

[00:07:47] Oh, maybe 

[00:07:48] Mark Pearson Freeland: during today's show, you can pause, rewind, really get into a comprehensive, deep dive then. Yeah, I think you're totally right, Mike. So for all those who are listening along today [00:08:00] with episode 11, rapid prototyping, please welcome Bob Niles, John Terry Nile and marshaling can DMR Tom mark Marjon corner, Rodrigo Yasmeen, and Liza said Mr.

[00:08:13] Bond, ger Maria and Paul Berg and Kalman David Joe, crystal Evo, Christine hurricane brain Sammo Ella Kelly, Barbara, Bob, and. Cool Mike, that list is getting pretty 

[00:08:27] Mike Parsons: long. Yeah. And a special shout out to Kelly, Barbara, Bob, and Andre, as they are brand new members who all joined up in the last week. We are very grateful for your contribution.

[00:08:38] And we really are so delighted to share this journey with you, our members, our subscribers, because we think this is a mission worth doing shooting for the moon, as you would say, trying to be the best version of yourself and the way we love to do it is learning out loud, doing it together. And we really are [00:09:00] thankful.

[00:09:01] We are grateful for your contribution. It helps us pay some very important bills that we get as part of doing this show. But more importantly, you're part of something where we're all trying to do things just that 1% better every single day. So thank you so much to your for your patronage, for your membership, for your subscription.

[00:09:22] We really do appreciate it. And in return, we want to shine the light on one of the greatest prototypers of the mall. Breakthroughs are tremendous. Whether it's the vacuum cleaner, the hairdryer, basically, if his moving he's innovated with it, he's convinced us to pay thousands of dollars for a vacuum cleaner, which when I was a little younger, would've sounded totally crazy.

[00:09:47] But that is the reality of today. That is the reality of the work of none other than not only Mr. James do. But so 

[00:09:56] Mark Pearson Freeland: James Dyson, 

[00:09:57] Mike Parsons: that all we'd hear was banging and crashing the [00:10:00] soaring and there were on the sea every day, there was a development and then a failure and the development that a 

[00:10:06] James Dyson: failure I'd be able to do about one test like that a day.

[00:10:10] And I get in the next day and make a different site clean and do another session day after day, 

[00:10:18] Mark Pearson Freeland: month 

[00:10:18] James Dyson: after month, as it turned out year after year. Apart from that, we had a normal fun tonight. 

[00:10:25] Mike Parsons: He was only there for quite a long time before he started getting the old person in to help life 

[00:10:30] James Dyson: in the coach house.

[00:10:31] At that time, it was pretty, quite similar to a lot of small businesses. First, September 89. And it was quite a magical place, but they had music. Everybody was very busy. Everybody knew exactly what they were doing. Those grades esprit de Corps for up 

[00:10:46] Mike Parsons: designs, prototype note downstairs 

[00:10:49] James Dyson: in the workshop.

[00:10:49] Mike Parsons: So if you find out downstairs, they say maybe at the end of the day, we'd go 

[00:10:54] James Dyson: down and help out. And we haven't got a salesman. We hadn't got a production manager. We had none of the structure [00:11:00] and organization that you have when you set about manufacturing something. We were merely a group of engineers developing a product at this stage.

[00:11:08] And then I can remember the day when we 

[00:11:09] Mike Parsons: actually made a hundred machines. And that was a sort of like a big sort 

[00:11:11] Mark Pearson Freeland: of threshold to, to get to a small 

[00:11:15] Mike Parsons: team of two or three people that achieved a full on the production 

[00:11:18] Mark Pearson Freeland: line is incredible. The speed with which all changed. And the 

[00:11:22] third 

[00:11:23] Mike Parsons: year of college from everyone talking about.

[00:11:26] Phillip starck Roslov goes Richard Sapper, lessee to everyone talking about that in lectures in the third year, this is the designer of the future. This is 

[00:11:39] Mark Pearson Freeland: the businessman and 

[00:11:40] Mike Parsons: his, and this is someone who actually manufactures what they've invented and I'm extremely proud. And I realized then in fact, how unique he was and what he had 

[00:11:49] Mark Pearson Freeland: achieved.

[00:11:51] Certainly somebody who's unique, Mike, a man who is our assessor, who's owning all of the movement of air, as you say, [00:12:00] but the secret behind it, behind his development and his engineering was failure every day, every month turns out every year, talk about resilience and grit. 

[00:12:11] Mike Parsons: Yeah. And this is really something that I discovered with rapid prototyping, which I can see in this clip, which is when you continuously apply.

[00:12:22] The rate of learning is off the charts. What happens is you see patterns in what are the pains that customers experience. And then you see the gains that they're looking for when you get them to test with prototypes, you get this incredible high fidelity feedback from low fidelity prototypes, which is the irony.

[00:12:47] And it is such a delight because in many cases, imagine if you didn't do this you just be doing some wishful thinking or gambling basically, or let's try [00:13:00] this. Why guess when you can know what people want, when you can know what's going to work in the product. To me, that is the shift that we're starting to see here, and you just have to stick at it.

[00:13:11] You have to do. Test after test day after day and try to reveal what the true product should be, what the true service design should be. And I think this is very stark to, in comparison to what we often think is that some guy's struck by lightning has an aha moment and then the product just appears.

[00:13:37] And that's just simply not the truth. Is it. If Walt Disney, Thomas Edison, James Dyson, do you realize James Dyson made 5,000 prototypes before he got it right? He did it for years in the back shed before he got it. This is what it takes. But look at the business [00:14:00] is built now. Not bad, huh? Not bad at 

[00:14:03] Mark Pearson Freeland: all.

[00:14:04] The it's a really interesting. Lesson isn't it in how much work goes into a successful product or business or in the Walt Disney case entertainment. And like you just said, Mike, a lot of us, when we're thinking about starting a new business, or let's say it's writing a book or whatever it might be, you get put off because things just become that little bit too difficult.

[00:14:32] Customers didn't really like the first one, so I, it's not, I'm not cut out for it. It's not my time. And instead of making that excuse and getting disheartened by it, that it is the truth that you just need to put in that hard work. We see it time and time again on the moonshot show, the people who create the biggest changes I think in the world are the ones who do just put in.

[00:14:59] That lot [00:15:00] of effort. And sometimes those are years worth of effort to get just into the maybe household name or just learning about themselves to create that new behavior 

[00:15:12] Mike Parsons: next time. That's right. But the good thing is here, like the option or the choice that you have is that you don't necessarily have to sit in a room and trying to imagine every single detail of the product, which is an incredibly hard job to do.

[00:15:34] What you can do is build an early stage prototype and take it to your customers. Get some feedback, get some signal through the noise. And what's beautiful about this is you can work equally as hard. Sitting on your own or building prototypes and going with customers, that's your choice. But the difference is that you're already starting to validate the product ideas.

[00:15:58] So early on [00:16:00] what I would argue, mark is then the path it starts to reveal itself and becomes very obvious because you're getting all of this feedback from the prototype. So you're like, ah, this little button it's not moving the right way. We need to completely redo that. And you spend a day or two on that.

[00:16:19] Then you get that button then you have to focus on a dial. We need to get the dial, then there's the tray move over to the tray. Then there's the boxing and the packaging. Oh, you're spending a whole week on that. But you know what, at the end of it, it's all pretty tried and tested. It's actually looking pretty good versus what would happen before.

[00:16:40] Is if you will like segway, thought their technology was so damn good. And it was so proprietary that they had to do all of their development in secret. Not only did they hide it from their competition, they made the fatal mistake of hiding the product [00:17:00] from their customer. So when segway launched, they had this massive ambition of the whole world would be powered by segway devices, but the truth was, people started getting on them and mark, they confessed that when they wrote on them, they felt a little bit silly, a bit stupid.

[00:17:20] So they had this whole social design problem because. As good as the gyroscopes and all the technology that we're creating the balance in the device, as good as all that was, people felt a bit stupid when they were on them. I think they thought they looked, they broke that kind of social convention.

[00:17:43] So what happened was by hiding it from everyone, customers included, the products felt weird. And then when it feels weird, people don't buy it when they don't buy it. The company fails and segway. Mr huge [00:18:00] opportunity because they were so invested in their design, which they had not tested with anyone. It's the classic example of not prototyping with customers, isn't it?

[00:18:10] Yeah. It's 

[00:18:10] Mark Pearson Freeland: the perfect example. Isn't it? Not only with the segues, do they look they're a little bit silly, but they, it does seem to me as though they just didn't test what brand new individuals who weren't working on the product, how they would utilize it. There was that great, famous story of president George W.

[00:18:32] Bush falling off a segway when he was first giving it a go. And I think it's just, again, a good opportunity. If they'd done that little bit of testing, maybe they would have designed that first interaction with a customer. Whether it's the president of the United States or otherwise climbing on top of it, they would have figured out, okay, maybe that little bit of balance that we're all used to because we've developed the product nobody else has.[00:19:00] 

[00:19:00] So let's figure out a way that improves maybe that balance or makes people feel that little bit more confident and you're right. The validation that can, you can get from a genuine customer. Maybe it's somebody who's never even heard of your brand to interact with it, to figure out how to do it themselves.

[00:19:19] It can reveal those. Issues or criticisms that maybe you've been perhaps too proud to admit, perhaps you look at the floor and think no one else will notice knowing that he's going to realize that doesn't make any sense because they're going to be using it in a different way. And I think when you do put a product in front of a consumer, you might be surprised at how either a easy the customer finds your product or B how hard they find it.

[00:19:53] And just by doing those simple tests, as you were breaking down, Mike, you can validate how those customers and [00:20:00] users start using the product. And then maybe. You end up uncovering something that totally surprising, and then you can go out and improve it after that. 

[00:20:09] Mike Parsons: Yeah. It's why do you think so many so many people fall victim to not prototyping their ideas?

[00:20:17] Why is it that when a lot of people that I made say, oh, I've got this idea for an app or I'm building an app, I'm working on an app. And my first question is always okay, so how many people have you actually tested this with? And invariably, the answer is zero, really? And I'm I wanna I'm trying to understand what's the psychology of not wanting to test.

[00:20:41] Do you think it's one that invariably, most of them. I'm not used to prototyping our ideas early on, or as you were touching upon, are we scared of the feedback or we don't know how to deal with the feedback. What do you think it is that makes people just reluctant to [00:21:00] test and learn at such an early stage?

[00:21:02] They'd almost rather hide it. Do you think it's fear of failure? 

[00:21:04] Mark Pearson Freeland: I think it's fair of not being the first to market. So I think in the segway example that you've just broken down. It sounds to me as though they kept all of their cards and indeed products close to their chest. So that competitors couldn't find out their proprietary method of transportation, moving forward, backwards, turning and so on.

[00:21:29] And I think when you meet entrepreneurs who are bringing out new products or agencies, they are trying to get out into the market before other people and therefore. For them, they don't feel like they have the available time to go out and do testing. Instead. It's a, either a fake timeline that they've given themselves or somebody up the management chain has told them, you've got to launch it by [00:22:00] Q2, get it out.

[00:22:01] So you fall back into the pattern of we'll test the next one. We'll launch this one, then we'll come back to it next year. And I think that it's a lot of time that people Detroit people avoid doing it because of time. And when the truth is it's, it can be quite quick concept. 

[00:22:20] Mike Parsons: There's that?

[00:22:21] And I just think to myself, if we're the optimist if we look on the positive side, mark people perhaps are just don't know about the power of prototyping or their. Just a little bit worried about the, how to process the feedback. I think if we indulge ourselves a little bit here, I think sometimes people think they've got the big idea.

[00:22:48] Mark Pearson Freeland: I, I think ego definitely plays into it for a 

[00:22:52] Mike Parsons: lot of people. Yeah. I think a lot of people are like, ah, this is going to be huge. And [00:23:00] then reality comes, segway guys thought, I believe that they expected, it was a massive number, Mike, that hundreds of thousands of units in the first year or two.

[00:23:13] And they sold less than 5,000. 

[00:23:16] Mark Pearson Freeland: The first, there's much commentary online about segway, but I do know that when they debuted the product, they did have to recall the first five or 6,000 because when the battery ran out, users would fall off. 

[00:23:33] Mike Parsons: See what happens when you don't prototype 

[00:23:35] Mark Pearson Freeland: the first 5,000 off the production line.

[00:23:37] They had to recall because customers didn't know what to do when it ran out. So that's a great example, isn't it of not testing the customers throughout that whole journey and therefore having to recall very costly recalls and damaging the brand equity in the image, just because they didn't do that little bit of 

[00:23:57] Mike Parsons: testing.

[00:23:58] Yeah. You might even argue [00:24:00] that got them. So behind the eight ball in the end that, that was the end of their future prospects fascinating study of lack of prototyping. But now that we've established some of the greats have done prototyping now that with established one of the great brands of our moment, Dyson vacuum.

[00:24:20] That rapid prototyping was at the heart of the Genesis of the entire business. Now we can start to cast our eyes a bit towards the future, and what's really nice now is we can entertain mark the fact that a prototype can be both digital and physical, right? 

[00:24:40] Mark Pearson Freeland: Yeah, that's right. In the next flip we've got is from Tom wood Jack.

[00:24:44] Who's a great tech pioneer Ted speaker and entrepreneur. And what Tom's going to do for us is exactly that Mike demonstrate to us that digital and physical methods of building prototypes can unite. And let's hear now from Tom Rudy [00:25:00] described to us what he calls the future of. Disruptive thought 

[00:25:05] Tom Wujec: occurs when you encounter an idea that is outside of your comfort zone.

[00:25:11] We have patterns of thinking that keep us regarding the world in certain fixed ways and our mental frames of reference, highlight some things and delete other things from our awareness habits, frames of reference comfort zones are very familiar blocks to creative thinking when people are delivering ways of thinking that you know is outside of your particular industry, what you've seen as that, oh, that's really cool.

[00:25:38] That provides a different. That can be an awesomely great thing, because it provides a fresh perspective, breaks, open a new way of thinking that breaking open releases a kind of fresh energy, reaching an innovation. And one of the big problems in corporate north America and Europe is that people think innovation is a thinking activity.

[00:25:58] You don't innovate through [00:26:00] PowerPoint, you innovate by building things. I think that we can foster a society that is much more innovative and creative. If we get people's hands dirty and build prototypes, spill, examples of the stuff that you're trying to solve prototyping has several values. First of all, it makes your thinking tangible.

[00:26:20] So you can see what you think and you see what your solution can be. It provides other people a chance to be able to see your thinking and contribute to it. Even have a digital model of a building before it's physically created. Insight into the problem that you're trying to solve the solution that you're trying to create prototypes, not only show you what, more importantly, they reveal what you don't know, and then continue that iterative process of figuring it out, keep working at it, evolve, really understanding it.

[00:26:46] It's that deep engagement, the freeing of the best of your imagination, creativity, everything you've got into figuring it out. That's what prototypes do. I think we have a hunger and a desire to make the world a better place. And we're now starting to [00:27:00] see the breakthroughs come, not from the industry experts necessarily, but people working from outside of these industries to come up with some insight or some connection or some way to deliver an unexpected solution.

[00:27:12] Mike Parsons: I love the fact that what Tom is really proposing to us Therma is that not only will prototyping work out, whether your existing idea is any good it'll reveal to you. New ideas. And I think that's the unexpected bonus, the cherry on the top with rapid prototyping. Isn't it? 

[00:27:36] Mark Pearson Freeland: Yeah, I totally agree.

[00:27:37] I think as we're making the case in today's series show about rapid prototyping, I think one of the unexpected benefits is when a customer I, a tester or an interacting with your prototype does say something to you that maybe catches you off guard. And that can be positive or it can be negative, but regardless it's [00:28:00] valuable, isn't it.

[00:28:01] If you hear from a customer that let's say you've created a product that has a very specific use case, like the segue, going backwards and forwards, maybe a customer would prefer to use it. Off-road suddenly you might think, oh, that's funny. We didn't design it for that, but they've really revealed to us that there is an opportunity to avoid puddles for example.

[00:28:21] And isn't it an interesting benefit. And it's something that you don't really know. And going back, Mike, to your question earlier, why entrepreneurs don't do rapid prototyping? I think you might be right in the fact that they don't know, they don't know the value of rapid prototyping and therefore they don't understand the benefits that they might be getting such as a customer or a user revealing what you don't 

[00:28:44] Mike Parsons: know imagine.

[00:28:45] And so what we have in front of us right here with rapid prototyping is. Proven throughout the ages, some of the great inventors have used it. One of the biggest innovative brands of out time Dyson it's there. [00:29:00] And what we also can see is that this practice will not only help us validate what we have, what we know, but also might bring to us new creativity, imagination for things that we don't know for things that we don't imagine.

[00:29:13] Mark, we are making we're on trial here. We're making a case for rapid prototyping. Is there anything else we need to add to that list? I want to get people so fired up. I want our listeners, our members and our subscribers, so ready to crack at it that the second part of the show will feel like an app.

[00:29:31] So Lou treat, when we get into the, to the deep understanding of rapid prototyping, How have we sold the benefits? Enough for rapid prototyping if we left anything? 

[00:29:42] Mark Pearson Freeland: Look, I think that the only thing to add before we now get into the second part of the show, which is about understanding the, how tos and then into the how-tos is just making the case, Mike, that this is definitely one of those, the best ways we can [00:30:00] determine and learn whether the products that we are building solve a real customer problem, because more often than not, you go out, you might release it as we've discussed in heard throughout the show so far.

[00:30:13] And then you realize, okay, either a, the customer's not using it, how I intended it, or maybe B, they just think it's a load of nonsense. So unless you've determined and identified that problem for the customer and therefore can see whether your product fits it. How are you going to know if it's going to go out and change the 

[00:30:31] Mike Parsons: way.

[00:30:32] Yes. There's the history is littered with massive product failures. If you go right back in time, there was the smokeless cigarette. But the way I think it was Reynolds, that was the tobacco coming. I can't remember, but the way they made it smokeless was using a a chemical that tasted terrible.

[00:30:55] And so people who got a smoke with cigarette, I said, you know what? It [00:31:00] tastes like charcoal. And if they had just tested it, they would never have released the product. And they did one of those huge product releases, that didn't take off at all. And the reason was the first thing people did is they took it.

[00:31:16] They took a taste. They tried the product and it tasted terrible. And it was done. You could have got that with prototyping before, or how about this? Do you remember another great one of more recent times? Do you remember the hoverboards that were out like five, 10 years ago and everyone would be zipping around on those hoverboards?

[00:31:34] I don't know. The, they would stand on their two little, we said like a mini segway without the pole. 

[00:31:39] Mark Pearson Freeland: Yes. Yes. The mini yes. Yes. Yeah. So 

[00:31:42] Mike Parsons: what was YouTube and ticked up leaded with people falling off the things, and they had battery concerns because, and the batteries were exploding.

[00:31:51] Here's another one. The Amazon fire. It was this Amazon phone where you would shop in 3d prototype that one.[00:32:00] You can just go on there. It's just lists and lists of these things of these products that had that. Had they actually just tested them earlier. They wouldn't have needed to have wasted all that money of going to market with a product that nobody wanted, man, hundreds 

[00:32:19] Mark Pearson Freeland: of thousands, millions of dollars to market it, but also build the product in the first place.

[00:32:24] My, that we've got to have made the case now for our subscribers. Yeah. 

[00:32:30] Mike Parsons: Rapid prototyping, right? Yes. So before we go deep into some of the more technical scientific stuff that is inside of prototyping I think it's really important to remember this as a master series. So if you're listening to a master series, you might not get through the whole thing in one go, that's fine.

[00:32:47] But we strongly recommend that you have the show notes with you because there's a ton of links references, downloads, things that go with this. We really try to design a [00:33:00] master series episode to be. At complete into a masterclass. Don't we? And so where do we find these show notes with all these goodies mark?

[00:33:10] Mark Pearson Freeland: Our members and subscribers can navigate over to perhaps Mike, the hottest place on the internet. Something that we've prototyped and developed and refined over the years. And that's a little destination called moonshots.io. And exactly like you say, Mike, we've tried to design it in a way that all of our subscribers and members and listeners can visit.

[00:33:34] They can pause during the show. They can check out our pretty extensive reading lists for every. Master series. And we range from maybe 10 to 20 books per master series because members, as these are comprehensive deep dives into very specific topics. We've also got links to all of the videos and the credits that we go through on the show, as well as transcripts and [00:34:00] download links can be pretty handy if you want to read along or even fill out frameworks as we are discussing them on the show.

[00:34:08] So we really employee to pop along to moonshots.io, to access every single valuable piece of content framework information that we've created to live a long slide, our comprehensive, deep dive on the master series. 

[00:34:24] Mike Parsons: Fantastic. So head over to moonshots.io, get all the goodies you need to shoot for the moon.

[00:34:31] So now let's break rapid prototyping down. We are going to go deep into it. We are going to hear once again from sir James Dyson, but before we do well, let's head over to the the idea of getting what a prototype is super clear in our mind. And don't forget it can be digital. It can be physical.

[00:34:52] And to tell us about this is the Witter lessee tech school who are going to help us define what is a prototype. 

[00:34:59] Whittlesea Tech School: [00:35:00] Prototype is an early example of a product that can be used to visualize test and integrate part of an idea or concept. This means that it may only demonstrate a single pace of the idea such as mechanical electrical or physical properties.

[00:35:17] This has done so that you can test HBase cheaply to make sure it works and that people will want the product by making the prototype of a smaller pot. It can be tested easily and any changes can made without rebuilding the entire product. The materials use for a prototype are often cheaper and easier to work with so that changes can be made easily.

[00:35:40] As the prototype is iterated. The materials used to resemble the final product more. This also allows for the prototype to be changed and improved quickly based on feedback and testing. This process is called iteration. The first prototype is [00:36:00] usually a rough sketch to make sure that the idea is clear for everyone working on the different parts of the design.

[00:36:06] It should include a clear breakdown of each of the things to be tested using annotations. The testing of a prototype requires careful feedback. The testing needs to reflect the prototypes function. If the prototype is testing an electrical feature, then feedback on its mechanical strength. Isn't useful.

[00:36:28] Three constant iteration. A series of prototypes can come together to form a polished final 

[00:36:33] Mike Parsons: product. 

[00:36:34] Mark Pearson Freeland: Mike, there's a handful of really valuable definitions and breakdowns and thoughts within that. W where do we want to start with understanding what is 

[00:36:44] Mike Parsons: a prototype? I dunno, but that young lady from Whittlesey texts cause she was nailing it because she was hitting on it's cheap, small eyesight, or you build it feature by feature, click by click.

[00:36:55] The fact that you keep it very low fidelity means you can change it really quickly, which means you [00:37:00] don't have to invest very much. And then you can learn quicker. The more you learn quicker, the better it gets. Like what, these are some of the foundational tenants of prototyping, but Mike, what I want to get your thoughts on is she really cracked the big one, which is this idea of.

[00:37:17] Iteration. What do you think? 

[00:37:18] Mark Pearson Freeland: Yes. Yes. I totally agree. The iterations importantly, that are built upon the feedback that's captured from those users, taking those cheap, small, but maybe isolated. Areas, maybe modules or just elements of your product, getting the feedback from users, understanding what they do.

[00:37:40] And don't like, how do they use it? How do they not use it and making those small iterations, importantly, based on that user testing, isn't that right? Mike, you want to iterate many times over in fact as we heard from that clip constant iteration, I think has to be [00:38:00] within a framework or anchored perhaps by the feedback that you're receiving from users.

[00:38:05] Mike Parsons: So apart from the iteration, I think you're right. I think you're bringing us to the next really critical thing, which is you have to think about the user in the context of this iteration. Every product has a user. And if you are just sometimes at the beginning you are the user, that's where the idea comes from, but you quickly need to get to testing your idea with third parties as a think about it.

[00:38:37] It's a bit like a sounding board or sort of an objective voice in the room. Because if you go back again to the segway example, they hid the product from everyone in doing so they killed the product. I would say the inverse of this is at the early stages. Go out test interview do a day in the life of mystery, shopping, whatever it [00:39:00] takes for you to interact with others.

[00:39:04] So that you're not drinking your own Kool-Aid that to me, other than the iteration of your prototypes, like continually refining day after day, week after week, but also doing this with the end user. So don't run away from them. Don't be shy, is the mantra, isn't it? 

[00:39:22] Mark Pearson Freeland: Yeah. Yeah. Don't be shy as to what they are going to tell you, much like with the Dyson example, he would have found things that will either would have contradicted, perhaps some of his earlier designs or the preferences, perhaps his personal preferences of what it was going to look like or sound like perhaps, and gradually through those use that usage of iterations your design ideas, your look, and feel maybe how it functions will probably change.

[00:39:53] So I think on top of. Interactional approach to these frameworks. I think [00:40:00] you yourself have to be pretty comfortable to be dynamic. Don't you need to be willing to explore and step away perhaps from your preferred version of that product into a more 

[00:40:11] Mike Parsons: dynamic way. Yeah. And I think that the the interesting thing that happens here is do you believe in the vision of helping your customer more than the indulgence of how good your own idea really is?

[00:40:31] I think it's very tempting as a founder that you have to get completely into this idea of self-belief you have to be determined and you have to like, hold onto your big vision. But the truth really is that prototyping gives you a way of holding onto your vision, but being flexible on how you get there.

[00:40:52] What prototyping does is gives you a path where you can hear the [00:41:00] message of what your customer really needs, but you've gotta be prepared to listen to it. And the tension here is sometimes, entrepreneurs and founders are so mission driven. In order to be resilient, they become tone deaf, right?

[00:41:17] They don't realize that the smokeless cigarette tastes awful. They don't realize that the new Coke tastes awful. They don't realize that when people get on the segway, they feel like idiots, that's what happens, hubris, ego, or whatever you want to call it. So it really sets us up to this idea of have a vision for the outcome and the impact that you want to have on your customer.

[00:41:44] For example, Amazon's vision is just to be the most customer focused company on the planet. So that pretty much gives them a wide area to shoot at. In terms of products and services, they, if their vision is not to be a bookstore, is it. [00:42:00] 

[00:42:00] Mark Pearson Freeland: No exactly. And that approach is I think something that, do you think that they were set out at the very beginning, in order to step away from that bookstore?

[00:42:12] Or do you think that came through with customers and the way that they were interacting with the brand? 

[00:42:18] Mike Parsons: I think in studying Amazon so much, what I can tell you is I think Bezos knew. That they could be more than a bookstore. He was just going to find out what that was going to be. He didn't have a clear, like AWS was an accident, they just needed better hosting and they ended up creating a business as good as anything else they've created.

[00:42:39] But the thing here is mark that, I think what we are setting ourselves up for now is the second lesson from James Dyson, which is that the practice of prototyping itself is one thing. But what goes hand in hand with the capacity to [00:43:00] design build a little prototype is the capacity. To learn while you're doing it.

[00:43:06] And so James, Dyson's going to tell us it's all about embracing and tracking your failures. 

[00:43:12] James Dyson: So as you build each of these prototypes, you make one change at a time, you've got to be very clear what you're trying to achieve and you mustn't stop until you've achieved. It just got a bit, it's gotta be perfect.

[00:43:23] And so you're watching each of these variables, you're recording it. You then tend to produce graphs or some form of visual display to try and understand. Because it's not always immediately obvious which bits working on, which it isn't. And often there's several variables you're looking at. So drawing that graph the way you subsequently display the results and then your analysis of that.

[00:43:50] Often gives you the clue as to why you should be going. Yes, no, there are stages. There's proof of concept and technology displayed and things like that. [00:44:00] They've all established a very good system. I don't quite understand it, but really what you're doing is proving that your technology idea works and that's probably the most difficult stage.

[00:44:11] And it's the stage of it's usually it has the most patents attached to it. So that's the first thing. And as I say, you don't do that with a complete product. You do it probably with the bit of it that you're inventing and those that prototype doesn't look like the real thing. It doesn't have to be made of the right materials.

[00:44:28] It just merely has to prove the technology. You then go on. So that's stage one. So I've now got my scientific principle, whatever it is working. You then try and incorporate that into a product, realizing that other things will happen when you do that. The start to variables will start to come in. So then you try and produce an entire product in prototype form, probably again, not worrying about how it looks or worrying, what materials are making it from.

[00:44:56] And we nowadays, we use all these object [00:45:00] printers and SLS prototyping various things rather than hand building prototypes or even machining prototypes. So we've got lots of fast ways of doing it so we can get quite quickly to seeing a product incorporating all the technology and working as a product.

[00:45:16] We're not too worried about what it looks like at this stage. So we get that to work. And then we say now. This be as a complete product, if it were injection molded or machine or whatever the manufacturing processes. And that's quite exciting as well. That's another great phase. So you end up with a fully functioning and visually correct prototype.

[00:45:38] And actually this one I've got here is a good example of that. That's not produced on production to length. This is all rapid prototyping, this entire product, but I can put it on a test course. I can get people to try it at home. So it will perform, behave exactly like the manufactured product. And you want to get rid of your problems before [00:46:00] you tooled up.

[00:46:00] Cause once you've tooled up and you produce the tooled up model you can't make any changes. So you've got to get it right on the prototype. So this is a really critical. And you've got to listen to and go and see how it's used in the home. You've got to beat it to death on the user course, and then you discover what's wrong with it.

[00:46:19] And there'll be lots and lots of things wrong with it. And you then make those modifications still in rapid prototyping. And then you go and test them again and then maybe 3, 4, 5 stages to that. And only when you're absolutely certain, you've got rid of all the problems, but technology works, the product works.

[00:46:38] It doesn't break people like it only then do you order the very expensive tooling to make this kind of thing in mass 

[00:46:46] Mark Pearson Freeland: production? Mike, that is a perfect breakdown that illustrates how us an individual like sir James Dyson would utilize and Dyson as a brand [00:47:00] and the whole would you.

[00:47:03] Rapid prototyping to put a product in its low fidelity form in front of customers to figure out how they use it, how they don't use it, what are they like? What they don't like before spending on the very expensive product pieces? Yeah. 

[00:47:18] Mike Parsons: Yes, I was hanging on that same one and that is the proof of the value creation of rapid prototyping that came from the fact, this is you defer all the expenses up into right to the end until you're confident until you've seen the evidence that it works for the user.

[00:47:39] And I would relate what James Dyson was talking about. Maybe to somebody that's a little closer to home. Let's imagine for all of our subscribers and members who are listening. That you're going to build an app. What you don't do is try and prototype the entire thing at the start. What you might do is just shake [00:48:00] one feature or one little moment.

[00:48:03] Or even if you go even to a diagnostic prototype, you might have 20 features, each one written on a post-it and you just ask the user to put them in priority order of which one would be most interesting for you. Then once you start to get a picture, maybe you do just one little moment of if it was a banking app, it's like getting your account balance or sending money to a friend, just a small little moment.

[00:48:32] And then it's only, you defer till the end, the pulling of the whole thing together. So you have an account page, you have a balance page settings, page, onboarding, sharing, upsell, cross, sell features, all of that good stuff, right? That only comes right at the end. After each step is validated. It's like bricks in a house.

[00:48:53] You're laying one at a time and you start bottom up, you start really as close to the magic [00:49:00] light, the killer app, start there and then build around that. And then only at the end, do you have something that is a fully working prototype? Dyson really pied it at first that it didn't he, yeah, I, 

[00:49:12] Mark Pearson Freeland: it just seems to me as though this type of testing, this rapid prototyping approach, this methodology, how much time?

[00:49:23] Actually, no, I should really say how much money it could save a business because when you, again, going back to your example, Mike would segue millions of dollars. Would've gotten. And then what do they find out? We have to recall, or we have to rebuild based on customer feedback without following the Dyson approach of testing, putting in front of a consumer in their homes.

[00:49:51] What I loved was when he said he, they beat it to death. How resilient is it to getting bashed on tables or thrown in a cupboard,[00:50:00] finding out all these weak links and these weak points in the prototype stage, the low fidelity prototype to then save that business or the, oh, this money.

[00:50:12] This is such a relief. I would say for any person, any team of people thinking about going out and building a product and launching it, all that anxiety of are we spending our money correctly? How do we know it's going to be. Just put it in front of a consumer and test it. What a relief this can bring.

[00:50:31] Mike Parsons: Yeah. And I think I want to bring this back to something that might be in our minds at this moment of the conversation. So to just take a little context here We saw that, in the first part of the show, we discovered that Hey Disney's using this James, Dyson's using him.

[00:50:48] This Tom, we act the futurist is telling us about the, this kind of immersion and this combination of physical and digital, lots of exciting things there. [00:51:00] And then we really got into the business of breaking down what a prototype is and how it really works with this continuous learning finding out things that fail things that work and then iteratively building and continuously learning.

[00:51:14] Now we might be tempted to think, geez, this sounds like a really long process, right? 

[00:51:22] Mark Pearson Freeland: Yeah. Yes, exactly. It might feel like it's going to take a long time. 

[00:51:27] Mike Parsons: Yeah. And that's fair enough, but less let's say. To indulge this argument, mark that yes, rapid prototyping at the early stages slows you down. Because you're just not building something I put to you this, in the case of the creators of the smokeless cigarette at Reynolds or the creators of new Coke, this terrible failure of the relaunch of Coke or of the Microsoft kin phone or the segue, I dare you go, just think for a moment, [00:52:00] go to those people and say, Hey, do you wish you had done some prototyping with the yeses at the beginning?

[00:52:07] I think they would all emphatically say, yes, don't you mark? 

[00:52:11] Mark Pearson Freeland: 100%. And I think that's where at least for me the idea of rapid prototyping earns its name rapid, because what you're doing is you are fast forwarding having brought the product to market. So let's put the smoke a cigarette again, as the forefront we fast.

[00:52:31] Two months down the line products come out. What are people saying about it? Don't worry. We found out through the prototyping phase. So therefore the rapidness, even though it might feel as though there are a number of different stages. And as Dyson said, you want to test it, then test again. You might do that four or five times through very iterative builds on prototypes.

[00:52:53] And that's even before you've built sorry, bought the physical screws and pieces of plastic remedies [00:53:00] for the app. I think you're right. That's where the rapidness comes in because you are jumping almost into the future. When that smoke a cigarette has hit the market and you're finding out beforehand 

[00:53:11] Mike Parsons: let's build on that.

[00:53:12] Let's just say that it takes the design and development of a new company and your business and your product takes 10% longer prelaunch due to rapid prototyping. Let's just, even though I'm not sure that's the case. Let's just say it was the case. Think about the time, effort and energy cost of launching a product.

[00:53:36] That's not right. That needs to be quickly fixed again. So let's say we launch a product and it's not right. We had this nice vision of a big product roadmap, which we've had to throw out because users hate our product, or maybe it's dangerous. Maybe there's a recall who knows? Think about the time effort, energy cost to fix a broken product [00:54:00] that's been launched.

[00:54:00] It's been manufactured. So your whole manufacturing line is tooled your distribution. You've got products in channel. You've got products in retailers that retailers and are sending back to you think about the cost of servicing all those angry customers because your product doesn't work well because you didn't test it with customers.

[00:54:21] I want you to look at that total cost. Infrastructure customer service. It would be massive if you launched a national product that didn't work well, 

[00:54:34] Mark Pearson Freeland: it would be so much higher than that. 10%. 

[00:54:36] Exactly. 

[00:54:37] Mike Parsons: Exactly. You slam dunk bark. That is exactly the case. So the cost of it going wrong. When you think about any additional work in product development should be put starkly against what ha what's the opportunity?

[00:54:53] Cause if we don't do this, what's it going to cost us down the track? 

[00:54:56] Mark Pearson Freeland: And it is something that you can't really [00:55:00] predict isn't it. And what I can think you can predict though, and build into a product release roadmap is the time for prototyping and the time for testing. I think that is in your control, the customer feedback, what they tell you, Hey, that might not be in your control, but the actual discipline of putting into your plans, the time to test is in your control.

[00:55:23] And what's out of your control is that feedback or the recalls that come after you've launched, those are the things completely out of your control. So just shifting it into taking ownership before the launch, or even before you've made the roadmap, you're defining the product to this point.

[00:55:40] Mike Parsons: Yes. So to give you an idea of the the opportunity here is that. When you're weighing up the investment into rapid prototyping, recruiting uses and learning and stuff like that. What I want you to imagine is that if you are not going to do that, you have this massive risk after a [00:56:00] launch, but here's the other thing, even in product development, if you haven't been, prototyping and testing with customers, you could spend a lot of time in effort on features.

[00:56:11] They don't want, let me tell you a great little story here. PayPal originally was so pioneering. They came in and said, we want to be a digital bank. So this is some 20 years ago, 15 years ago, they come out and they launch raft of features. The only one that people want was like a secondary feature where you could just email money between friends and that ended up becoming the business.

[00:56:38] They threw away the rest. 'cause back in the day, we didn't have, the Monzos and the resolutes, we didn't have that kind of technology back then. The only thing that worked originally for PayPal was emailing money to your friends. Can you imagine if you building this grand [00:57:00] product that may be 80% of your product customers actually don't want human wants to know this before you tried to build it.

[00:57:08] That's why 

[00:57:09] Mark Pearson Freeland: you hire the teams of developers before you spend, a hundred thousands or millions of dollars, as well as all that time to then find out that your customers use something that you considered a secondary feature. 

[00:57:23] Mike Parsons: Imagine a whole product team building features that we're going to be thrown away and all the support docs, everything that goes with it, all the testing, user acceptance testing, like all the stuff that's going to go with that product only to go, oh God, 90% of that we can throw in the bin.

[00:57:42] Mark Pearson Freeland: But I, I suspect it's so commonplace. This 

[00:57:46] Mike Parsons: happens all the time 

[00:57:47] Mark Pearson Freeland: and it's nuts when you do think about how much time does get wasted. 

[00:57:53] Mike Parsons: Yeah, I really agree with you. And we've really broken it apart. Rapid prototyping. It's iterative, [00:58:00] it's in stages. Start with small stuff, build up slowly over time, either a test and learn as really is the philosophy and mark you and I love to test and learn and we.

[00:58:12] Wanting to give the invitation to our members and our subscribers, the opportunity to reach out to us, tell us what questions they have about rapid prototyping and ma there's something that just doesn't get enough play on our show, which is we actually have heaven forbid we actually have an email address and we would love to invite members and subscribers to reach out to.

[00:58:37] Mark Pearson Freeland: You're totally right, Mike, we haven't given the email address a bit of a push for a while. So let's prototype this. Let's see if our members and subscribers would like to get in touch with us directly through our email. And that is hallow@moonshots.io. So get in touch with us. You can send us either recommendations for our weekly moonshot [00:59:00] show.

[00:59:00] You can even get in touch with us with any recommendations for the master series. Let us know what areas or clips or items from the reading list or frameworks that really stood out because it just helps my can I improve. And the moonshots family improve the way that we're building our product week by week, day by day with.

[00:59:20] Learning aren't we Mike from our listeners and subscribers, and only by you guys getting in touch with us, can we understand, what's the best, what's the worst. And therefore we can keep on delivering products that kind of send us all to 

[00:59:34] Mike Parsons: the moon. I totally agree. So whether you want to give us feedback on the show, suggest new shows.

[00:59:40] Have you got questions about rapid prototyping, whatever it is. hello@moonshots.ai, that's where you'll find us and we will be running mark. We will be sprinting one might say to answer those questions. 

[00:59:54] Mark Pearson Freeland: That's right. We love hearing from our listeners and subscribers. So leave us a note and we [01:00:00] can certainly take on board all of the recommendations and suggestions and Mike, I think that's just a great example again, of what a prototype can be.

[01:00:08] Mike Parsons: Yeah, we just prototyped or live here on the show. And when they're going to bring it home, we're going to give you three habits that you can do to make rapid prototyping, a daily practice for you. You can test and learn, optimize your products and your ideas. And we talked about sprinting. So when we're on that, and we're talking about rapid prototyping, there's only one guy that we need to listen to.

[01:00:32] And that's Jake. The big idea with a sprint is to build and test a prototype in just five days. It's like fast forwarding into the future. So you can see how customers react before you go to all the time and expensive building our real product. Every sprint starts with a big challenge, a team of about seven people and a clear calendar on Monday, you'll create a map of the problem and choose one specific target on Tuesday.

[01:00:58] You'll create solutions to your problem, [01:01:00] but instead of a shout out loud group, brainstorm you'll work alone to sketch detailed competing solutions on Wednesday. You'll pick the best solutions instead of endless debate. It'll use a structured decision making process on Thursday, you'll build a one, two or even three realistic project.

[01:01:18] These prototypes are just a facade of a finished product. You can use tools like keynote, Marvel, and envision to create fake apps and websites, or to quickly prototype hardware. You can use a 3d printer or modify an existing product, or just prototype the marketing materials. Finally, on Friday, you'll test your prototypes and five one-on-one customer interviews.

[01:01:42] You'll find obvious patterns. Some solutions will work, but some won't either way you'll have clarity about what to do next. And a great start on that big 

[01:01:51] Mark Pearson Freeland: challenge. Or that's the kind of money area there isn't it might. Where do you use start in? We've heard [01:02:00] from Dyson, we've heard from even Walt Disney telling us about the values of rapid prototyping, but where do we begin and hearing from Jack nap?

[01:02:09] There are author of sprint which we'll obviously include in the show. Notes is a great little introduction and breakdown to how you can start this with your team. 

[01:02:19] Mike Parsons: Yeah. And look, the sprint is a great way to structure your rapid prototyping. So you might have a week sprint, a day sprint, an hour sprint.

[01:02:29] You essentially want to bring people together. Come up with some ideas, test them with uses, get the feedback, improve upon those and just getting this continuous process. You can always take it to another level mark, which is something that you and I love to do. We love to do some interviews and some surveys prior to doing the prototyping, to start to really get a good sense.

[01:02:52] We like to write design challenges, or they're very structured and focused. For the first sprint, we [01:03:00] have a lot of pre-prepared materials. If you do all of those things, you can go really far. But if you're not that. That's okay. You can just focus on like a feature and prototype it, bring it to life, test it with somebody.

[01:03:15] The more sophisticated versions is you recruit third party users. You actually have several sprints in a day. You do several days back to back. That's when you get all that iterative compounding, because you test so many times you, you get this incredibly strong And I think this is where you start to really ramp up prototyping, put it in and putting it into that sprint structure.

[01:03:37] Wouldn't you 

[01:03:38] Mark Pearson Freeland: say, mark? Yeah. And I think I just want to touch upon something you said there you can prototype in many different ways. I think as Jake was breaking down, he put five days and exactly to your point, Mike, you can condense that if you need, you might not get as broad or as substantial as a Dyson when he's doing [01:04:00] multiple rounds.

[01:04:01] But depending on the time that you have, it's certainly worthwhile even just doing a few hours or a couple of days with customers where you're understanding or visualizing ideas and getting that feedback on certain product inclusions or formats or ways of utilizing that prototype. When you say Mike, it's just no matter how much time you've got, it's worth pushing to get it.

[01:04:25] Just to understand that, that essential framework when you've got five days or five hours. 

[01:04:31] Mike Parsons: Yeah. So since now let's build upon this. So we've got this sprint structure, which is really powerful. We'll have a link to it in the show notes at moonshot stow. I D I O so you can get more information there, but now let's do another key habit, which is the actual creation of the prototype.

[01:04:50] Let's listen to Angus Denison, as he talks to us about what it takes to build a prototype. So you've got an idea and you want to see what people think of it. You need to [01:05:00] make a prototype because you need to test that idea and see if it's actually a good idea. Or if you need to go back to the drawing board.

[01:05:06] So to make a physical prototype, you need to start with a sketch. You need to take that idea from your head down, into pencil and paper. It doesn't matter if you can't draw. I can't personally, we need to get that idea 

[01:05:16] Mark Pearson Freeland: out and onto something 10. 

[01:05:19] Mike Parsons: Then you're ready to start making a 3d model to make your physical prototype.

[01:05:23] So if you can't treat a model, that's actually not really a problem. These days, you can find someone who can team up with them and get a basic model out, but don't spend too long on it because you need to get to the next stage fast. And that is making the actual prototype. So you can take a 3d model and convert it into a file for 3d printing, very easily.

[01:05:41] Leave it overnight and come back to an actual 3d print, but you can then test. And this is the most important part. You need to test it quickly and thoroughly, and then go back and iterate on your design and repeat this process until you're happy with it. But if you get further down the process and find out you need to change something, it's a lot more [01:06:00] difficult.

[01:06:00] So don't be afraid of failure or. You want to test things as much as possible, and then iterate on that idea until you're happy. 

[01:06:07] Angus Deveson: I'm an industrial designer. And as an industrial designer, we're very interested in testing prototypes for a number of different reasons. And I've got some examples here of how we've run through a project.

[01:06:17] This is a pair of glasses were designed and the first prototype is a low quality FDM print, which is formed deposition modeling. And we've done this to check the physical appearance and the scale of the design. Once we're happy with that, we'll move to an SLS. So this is a select laser sintering might have a nylon.

[01:06:37] And in this instance, people are actually wearing the glasses. So we're interested in how they flex and feel and how the lenses snap in and out. So it's more expensive, but high quality, we then want to check some of the mechanical function. So in this instance, we've gone to. SLA a resin process with SLS hinges and we're checking the tolerancing between the parts and to make [01:07:00] sure that the mechanical functions, she would then move to a low-quality prototype tool where we've injected actual polymers into the mold to check how the material affects the business. The following. These are the final production glosses, which is again, injection molded, but in a high quality production tool and brings all the elements of the design together.

[01:07:20] Really when you're testing a prototype, you really want to test it to failure. You want to know where your design or idea doesn't work or not, where it works. And often we'll see people test a prototype and say, isn't it great. So it does all these things, but they're ignoring an inherent floor, which will bring you on down.

[01:07:35] If you don't expose it early in the boating scenario, that's making a boat and testing until it fails working out, how many people can you put in it before it capsulizes trying to drop test and break them. So 

[01:07:47] Mike Parsons: for us, we we build these things. So which smart helmets, we destroyed heaps of them.

[01:07:50] These are made 3d printing and CNC milling, and we just got them out that test the user interfaces and destroyed them. Often. We miss the user experience of our products and a great [01:08:00] way to get that out there. It's just to give you a product as a prototype to lots of just regular people. They'll give you honest feedback, whether it will make sense.

[01:08:06] Okay. Often when you're beginning your idea, you want to put all the greatest functions into it, but it's really about time and getting to market fast. What you need to do is drop all the functions and features that you have in your product. Put red lines through the ones that don't have to be there in the first one and make it finished, not perfect 

[01:08:23] Mark Pearson Freeland: or finish not perfect.

[01:08:25] And an exercise in just putting in the essentials, Mike prioritization. It 

[01:08:32] Mike Parsons: was so fun to listen to those guys because I think what captured what was captured in their conversation was that actually rapid prototyping is a ton of fun and we've experienced the same thing. Yeah. Yeah, 

[01:08:46] Mark Pearson Freeland: absolutely.

[01:08:47] It's so much fun to just get in front of customers. Mike, there's, a lot of us will spend our time orientated around launching an idea or a product, and we'll just be talking to [01:09:00] our teammates or colleagues, and we'll all be, in that same world, but actually getting an opportunity to get in front of real beings who don't have any idea what you're talking about.

[01:09:13] Mike Parsons: It's 

[01:09:14] Mark Pearson Freeland: not only really fun, but man, it can be just a little bit uncomfortable. Can't it? 

[01:09:19] Mike Parsons: I think it's it's a choice the discomfort in that you can put yourself out there and say, Hey, I'm testing this idea. The sooner, the earlier you do that, the better the ideas going to get the longer you leave it.

[01:09:33] I think I've made the case with the segway, the smoke, a cigarette, the new Coca Cola. The list goes on. I think the point is don't be shy and actually you can start to really enjoy it and you get a sense of let's see. What if, how might we spontaneity the unknown? And I think that is all part of the journey that is rapid prototyping, right?

[01:09:56] Yeah. Yeah. 

[01:09:57] Mark Pearson Freeland: It's it is a journey, isn't it? It can [01:10:00] be an, and I've certainly experienced this Mick during rapid prototyping sessions that you and I, and the team have put on in the past. I think there's always a moment when you start to get that little bit uncomfy. But for me, at least we've done a few.

[01:10:16] You can almost see when it's going to come. You'll get through a couple of sprints as J you'll plan it out. You'll start to get some low fidelity examples. Maybe it's as simple as a sketch on a piece of paper, or maybe as I'm akin to do, post-it notes. If you're doing a smartphone app, you can put posties on your phone screen and ask a customer to flick through them.

[01:10:40] That's just a little example. But after a while, Mike, sometimes you start to realize, oh, that product feature that I really liked, man. Customers don't really like it after it arrives. The good news for me is that when it, now I've done enough of them, I can notice when that discomfort is coming [01:11:00] along. But I have enough awareness that I know something new will come out.

[01:11:07] So if a customer says, Hey, no, look your idea. It doesn't work. Because my phone's always on do not disturb mode at this time of night. Oh, okay. Fine. And you might get a bit disheartened, but then they might reveal something else. But what about if you told me in the morning, suddenly that's a whole new avenue to go, and that's where I think that fun and dynamism and energy can come in because ultimately what you're doing, you're collaborating, you're bringing up new ideas with new people and what's more fun than collaborating with other people, right?

[01:11:39] Mike Parsons: Absolutely. And it gives you new energy, new insights to move forward and to create value. And I believe that brings a square and center to the idea of entrepreneurship, which is creating something valuable that people are prepared to pay for. And that mark, that brings us to our [01:12:00] last clip of the.

[01:12:01] Mark Pearson Freeland: That's right. Closing out our show and our master series episode on rapid prototyping. Mike is none other than Tom MACI, Tom. She very well known in the space of rapid prototyping. Certainly an advocate with regards to Google glasses, but this particular clip is Tom. She breaking down for us and stress testing the business model that exists around entrepreneurship.

[01:12:25] Tom Chi: But we try to very interesting approach to iterating the business model instead of doing the normal MBA thing of sitting down, creating a business model, doing a lot of Excel models and spending months and months obsessing about it. We said, yeah, we will make a business model, but we're going to make it.

[01:12:43] And we're going to test it in 20 minutes. So as soon as the business model was drawn, the team in the community center is driving the business model. They would call on their cell phones to teams that were out in the. And they would ask those people on the teams, in the [01:13:00] community to find the people that were represented at the business model and interview them to see if that business model made sense.

[01:13:05] Would they be willing to participate in the business model as described, show you what that looks like? So here's the home team right here is a model, a business model, dry I'm here as a cell phone on speakerphone. And they're connected with these two teams that are out in the community, talking with individuals in the community, and I'll share a specific example.

[01:13:26] I think this will help understand how quickly this happened. So the previous day we had interviewed folks in the community and we found a carpenter who was very skilled, but he couldn't get reliable work. And so that next morning, when these business models were being drawn, the, they came up with a business model where we have this carpenter, maybe what he can do is he can train some of the youth like boys between 13 and 20 years old, how to do carpentry and that'll provide a steady stream of.

[01:13:54] So they went back to the carpenter, talked to him about that. He was very excited cause he said, oh if you could get [01:14:00] that to happen, my income would triple it's amazing. And so the home team was excited. So they called the other way team and they say said, go find us some men between 13 and 20 years old and see if they'd be interested in this class.

[01:14:14] So they found some boys hanging out on the street, talked with them and they were interested in carpentry. They might pay 10 pesos to, for a lesson in carpentry, but the boys said, what would be really exciting is if we could learn how to fix cars and motors. What 15 year old boy doesn't want to learn how to fix a car, a motorcycle.

[01:14:32] So the home team said great. Now we need to find a mechanic. So they called their first away team and found a mechanic in town. And every time they called them, they only have 15 to 20 minutes to find somebody in the community that fits this role. So they found a mechanic within 20 minutes, talked to him and he said Hey, if we could bring 10 boys and that would pay you 10 pesos each nor to do a lesson in how to fix cars and motorcycles for a couple of hours, how would that sound to you?[01:15:00] 

[01:15:00] And he said, that's amazing. That would double my income. And it would be more stable for me that would help my family. But, actually there's a problem. I don't have a lot of extra cars and motorcycles for them to work on. I don't even know if I can really teach this class. So the home team getting this information, they called the other way team again and said, find us people in the community that have broken cars and motorcycles in their front yard, ask them if it's okay to lend it for a couple of weeks, to get those things fixed under the guidance of an expert mechanic and their students and so on and so forth.

[01:15:31] And you can see how every 20 minutes, every 30 minutes, the business model was adjusting and adjusting. And until it became more and more real, and by the end of three hours, four different action teams were doing this process, actually at the end of three hours, on average, they had updated the business model six to eight times and not in an arbitrary way, in a way that became so real that at the end of three hours, we had people coming in from the community ready to fill those jobs, [01:16:00] ready to serve each other in that new way that they had never imagined.

[01:16:04] Oh, and the one thing I forgot to mention about this particular experiment was the majority of these teams were just college students from a local college. They weren't brilliant business people. They weren't serial entrepreneurs. They didn't have any training in business, even really. I had just taught them how to draw a business model before we started.

[01:16:24] And what I saw in action that day was almost the essence of entrepreneurship. What it means to truly serve a community, what it means to truly create value by people interacting with each other. 

[01:16:36] Mike Parsons: Oh boy, Mack, the master himself has spoken. That is. Delightful because what Tom describes there is the bias towards getting feedback.

[01:16:53] Oh, that's an idea. Let's test it. Business model idea. Let's go and see if there's actually a market or [01:17:00] demand or there's value in that before we go. Any step further. This is prototyping on an epic scale. 

[01:17:07] Mark Pearson Freeland: Yeah, w I think what's demo what's demonstrated in that clip from Tom Chi is that you don't necessarily need to be building a vacuum cleaner or an application.

[01:17:20] It also works for just validating a business model. And I think that versatility and dynamism of rapid prototyping, the fact that it can be applied to so many. Avenues that you want to prove and validate within your business is so important. And I think, again, going back to one of your earlier questions in the show today, Mike, why do customer, why do businesses not do rapid prototyping?

[01:17:47] I think now it might be actually that they just don't understand the value or know how to do it. And what I'm hopeful here, particularly ending on that Tom cheek clip is that it's demonstrated to all of [01:18:00] us that, yeah, you might have a bias towards one particular. Cause of action or business model, but exactly as we heard in that clip actually the young guys just wanted to learn how to fix cars.

[01:18:13] Okay. Now let's pivot and the fact that they pivoted six to eight times within an hour, just shows the speed, the rapidness that can take place with this type of methodology. 

[01:18:23] Mike Parsons: Yeah. And shout out to Tom G in San Francisco. I mean he and I even prototype together, wait for this, an algorithm 

[01:18:32] Mark Pearson Freeland: of rapid prototyping 

[01:18:35] Mike Parsons: and a mathematical algorithm for a big brand.

[01:18:39] Oh, I see. On the how and how it spends its media dollars. And we rapid prototype with user feedback and everything on the ads. 

[01:18:48] Mark Pearson Freeland: So versatile X would be used 

[01:18:51] Mike Parsons: for anything. Yeah, we did a we did a whole new line of garments for Levi's. We did coffee machines for Q1. We [01:19:00] did headphones for a major consumer electronics brand.

[01:19:04] It is crazy how versatility's we even did our medical devices for GE medical. 

[01:19:11] Mark Pearson Freeland: Wow. So every industry all the way up to healthcare and medicine. Yeah. Benefit. 

[01:19:16] Mike Parsons: Yes. That is why prototyping is so amazing. It is so versatile that it's so powerful. 

[01:19:25] Mark Pearson Freeland: I th I think we've really orientated around this concept of versatility Mike and how beneficial it can be for a number of different businesses within this a deep dive into rapid prototyping, as I reflect on where we've been.

[01:19:41] Over the past 90 minutes. I now feel as though not only have we started proving the case for why it's valuable, but also demonstrating how you can actually go and do it. 

[01:19:50] Mike Parsons: It's so true. It's so true. So what we have here is not just building a prototype. It's [01:20:00] learning in an iterative process within a sprint construct, which zooming out even further.

[01:20:05] I believe that search of test and validate your ID is actually the beating heart of entrepreneurship because an entrepreneur wants to meet unmet needs to create value that people are prepared to pay for. It's not just I hope they like it. Not in, I know they need it. That's the difference. 

[01:20:28] Mark Pearson Freeland: Yeah, because then once you've defined that with a user, just imagine how much more confident you're going to be with your business plan, with your product creation, with your product team.

[01:20:42] Suddenly there's no more stress prior to, or maybe there's not as much stress prior to launch because actually that when the product comes out, people will go and buy it. You've validated that I'm going to tell you that 

[01:20:57] Mike Parsons: versus the, you're about to [01:21:00] press go live. You're about to put it in the app store.

[01:21:02] You're about to press print or hit the manufacturing button. And instead of being like, oh my God, I hope people like this. I hope people want this to being, oh my gosh, I can't wait to see this in the hands of users because they're going to love it. 

[01:21:16] Mark Pearson Freeland: It just feels to me like such a critical and under utilized methodology and framework and tool within our businesses, article our arsenal.

[01:21:26] Sorry, because without validating that idea it does just spell a potential waste of time. It's a lottery money. It's a lottery. Yeah. There's no guarantee 

[01:21:39] Mike Parsons: you have no idea if they're going to like this and you might deploy all that time to build it, but you put at risk. We talked about it earlier in the show.

[01:21:48] What happens if it's not right? What does that cost in terms of channel? Recall customer care rebates, discounts. Oh, what a nightmare. [01:22:00] 

[01:22:00] Mark Pearson Freeland: What an expensive nightmare that can be avoided by just maybe investing. Maybe it's 10%, maybe it's more, maybe it's less prior to the launch. It just to me, whenever we've collaborated and done rapid prototyping sessions before they are mind blowing in what they reveal breakthrough, that breakthrough concepts, ideas, insights that just add so much value to whether it is an internal structure for employees, whether it's a smartphone application or a brand new piece of technology, whether it's a kitchen appliance, it can work on all of these different layers and verticals and sectors.

[01:22:47] That it just, to me, it seems as though any of us who, who don't do it, where we're missing 

[01:22:52] Mike Parsons: out. That's so true. That's so true. Mark, we have covered a lot of ground in this rapid prototyping [01:23:00] master series of all the things that we've touched on. And we have to say that you're somebody who's done a lot of prototyping.

[01:23:07] So is there a particular topic that has percolated to the top? Something that's going to get your continued interest after the show? 

[01:23:16] Mark Pearson Freeland: I think it's the admission from James Dyson as well as Angus Davidson calling out the fact that you've got to get in front of consumers and hear the negative stuff.

[01:23:29] Yeah. You've got to accept that failures are going to happen. And the good news is if you find out the failure, now it's going to save you a whole lot of time, money and pain later on. So you might as well find those failures out now, celebrate it and then move on. Yeah, that for me is the big, aha. I think what about you, Mike?

[01:23:50] What's standing out as we revisit and dive into rapid prototyping that stands out for 

[01:23:54] Mike Parsons: you. I think something that we really got into towards the backend of this is don't be [01:24:00] scared. This is fun. Embrace the uncertainty, get into the unknown, that the negative feedback from users, because that's all a way of finding what is going to be positive for users, right?

[01:24:11] Yeah. 

[01:24:11] Mark Pearson Freeland: Yep. I think that's it positivity out of the potential negativity of it. 

[01:24:16] Mike Parsons: Yep. Yeah, totally. You're that much closer to finding the right. 

[01:24:20] Mark Pearson Freeland: And like you said earlier, it's just a lot of farm. 

[01:24:24] Mike Parsons: Okay. And how much fun have we had doing these? We've had people laugh. We've had people cry. We've had every drama and insight you could possibly imagine.

[01:24:35] Imagine it is just a joy mark. And I have to say, it's been a joy doing this master series with you. So thank you to you, mark. And thank you to you, our members and our subscribers. You have joined us for another master series, episode 11, rapid prototyping. And we went way back in the day and started with Walt Disney to find that he was prototyping.

[01:24:59] And then [01:25:00] fast forward to today, James Dyson, he's doing it thousands of times, day after, day out in the back shed originally, and Tom react, he said, Hey. The future of making is that intersection between digital and physical prototypes. And we learned that it is critical to embrace the ups and the downs to track them, to obsess them, to help make your product iterative every single day, you prototype and lock it in to one of those big, fabulous spring processes, which will help you structure your rapid prototyping to move forward, to learn more.

[01:25:37] And whilst you do that, whilst you learn. Break things learn about things and have some fun. It's a wild adventure that can yield so much value. And as Tom cheese showed us, it'll not only help you develop product, it'll help you build a business model. In fact, it goes to the very essence of entrepreneurship, and that's what we're about here at the moonshots [01:26:00] podcast.

[01:26:00] We're about going on this journey to be the best version of yourself together, to learn out loud so that we can really shoot for the moon. All right. That's it for the moonshots master series, that's a wrap.