Testing a prototype with real users
Design & Technology · Key Stage 2 · The School
What a prototype is for
A PROTOTYPE is a rough, early version. It is built to be tested and learned from. It is not built to be perfect. It exists to find problems while they are still cheap and easy to fix. That is long before the final version is made. A rough prototype that fails cheaply is far better than a finished product that fails expensively.
Watching without helping
A real user tries a prototype. The hardest and most useful part is staying quiet. Jumping in to explain "you're meant to hold it this way" hides the exact problem the test was meant to find. If a user gets it wrong, that IS the result. It is not a mistake to fix on the spot. Staying silent is genuinely one of the hardest parts of testing well.
From watching to a change
A user who struggles to open something is not a user to blame. It is a design to fix. Every real difficulty a tester has is new information. The designer did not have it before. The prototype's whole job was to make that difficulty visible, and cheap to fix.
A tester is handed a prototype box. There are no instructions. They are asked to open it. They turn it over twice. They pull at the wrong edge. It takes fifteen seconds to find the real opening. No help is offered the whole time. That struggle is not the tester's fault. It is exactly what the test was for. The opening edge needs to be more obvious. Now that is known before the box is finished, not after.