Prototype Testing Quotes

The only thing that was in my mind when we made that first phone call was, 'Is it going to work?' We had all these parts hand soldered together, engineers standing by with the soldering iron - just in case.

American Inventor', a show I came up with launched in 2006. It's all of America's greatest and wackiest inventions rolled into one with a judging panel including the legendary George Foreman.

I had to learn everything about manufacturing, patents and how to run a business, and eventually I came up with an prototype that worked.

It's much harder these days as a start-up to do physical devices.

The problem with prototypes is they don't always work.

I'll come up with an idea for a character, and I'll write some jokes and make sure that that character is going to have some legs to it - that it's really going to work. If I can come up with jokes and material that I think will work, then I make a cheap version of the doll. Achmed started out just being this little plastic toy from the store.

By and large, I'm in the same boat as other inventors. If we're lucky, of the 10 or 15 items we do a year, maybe one or two of them wind up with a licensing agreement.

From the very first inkling of a concept, founders need to gather a target group of five to ten potential users to begin the feedback loop. We all think we know how the market will react to new ideas, but actual users live with the pros and cons of the existing market conditions every day. They are the market experts.

With the early prototypes, I held the phone to my ear and my ear [would] dial the number. You have to detect all sorts of ear-shapes and chin shapes, skin colour and hairdo... that was one of just many examples where we really thought, perhaps this isn’t going to work.

The minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.

They call me before they go into production, when they have a prototype, and they call legitimate saxophonists, too. As opposed to the other kind.

There are two different types of prototyping. First, the gut sense. You know how far you can take it. Second, you need experts to figure out whether or not it is attainable.

Having a size 9 foot is fantastic because almost all of the shoe companies do their prototyping in size 9, so if you visit a place like Nike headquarters, you can try every sort of wacky, out-there model.

In software design, it's all about making a guess, trying it, and then learning from the experience.

Building the right product requires systematically and relentlessly testing that vision to discover which elements of it are brilliant, and which are crazy.

There is no way to find the best design except to try out as many designs as possible and discard the failures.

When talking to first-time entrepreneurs, I often ask them: 'How do you know that people want your product or service?' As you can expect, the answer is often that they don't yet, but will know once they launch. And they're right. That's why it's critical to launch as quickly as possible so you can get that feedback.

Don't wallow in brainstorming. Time spent fiddling with a business plan or filling up whiteboards with ideas is time that you could spend actually launching your business and seeing if the idea floats. Launching gives you real, solid feedback, instead of the imaginary 'what if' scenarios dreamed up in a conference room.

Most big companies work in stealth until they think they have a consumer product ready to go.

I love taking an idea... to a prototype and then to a product that millions of people use.

Most automakers develop multiple options for a single project. Then they present those options to a committee of executives who decide which one to go with. That takes a lot of time.

Don't spend months building something without any idea if someone actually wants it.

When we were kicking around the idea for Netflix in 1997, proving out an idea was expensive and labor-intensive. There was no Squarespace, no cloud. If you wanted a website, you had to build it from scratch. If you wanted an online store, you had to completely design it yourself.

From initial concept to final build, 'Train' was close to a year in development. Much of this was research and letting the dynamics of the project come to the surface.

Within HTC, hundreds of ideas are tested and discarded to find those rare ideas that define the HTC user experience.