“You use prototyping to process the ideas themselves and to help you think through the idea.”
—Chris Nyffeler, IDEO Executive Design Director

As an interaction designer and Executive Design Director at IDEO, Chris Nyffeler knows his way around high-tech digital tools. He’s worked with major tech corporations and government agencies and has helped to launch successful, design-centric tech startups in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

So you might be surprised to hear him say that he doesn’t think technology is always the answer when building something new. But it makes sense when you take a step back to understand the role of interaction design.

“At its core, interaction design as a discipline is about understanding people and their behavior and being able to effectively communicate within that space,” Chris says.

Tech is a means to that end, but not the only way to get there. So how does he find the answer?

By prototyping. 

Listen to this episode of IDEO's Creative Confidence Podcast to hear Chris chat with IDEO U Managing Director Coe Leta Stafford about the value of prototyping, how to create low-fidelity prototypes for digital products and services, and the role of technology in design. To learn more from Chris, check out his IDEO U course Prototyping for Digital Experiences.

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

What is a prototype?

A common misconception is that a prototype has to be high-tech, complex, or expensive. Chris offers a broader definition: “When we say prototype, that's anything that gets the idea in your head into an artifact people can experience and offer feedback on.”

That could be a digital rendering or a test website, but it could also be a sketch on paper, a PowerPoint presentation, or even a conversation role-play.

Sketching as a foundational skill for prototyping

David Kelley, IDEO founder, emphasizes that sketching is a foundational skill for prototyping. It’s one of the simplest ways to make your ideas tangible and create a shared reference point. Sketching isn’t about being a great artist—it’s about quickly communicating a concept so others can react and build on it.

“Think of your prototype as a prop that invites others to experience your idea,” David says. It helps transform abstract concepts into something people can understand, interact with, and improve.

Why everyone should prototype their ideas

Prototyping isn’t just for designers. Whether you're planning a workshop, building a product, or proposing a new business model, early-stage prototyping can help make your idea real enough for others to engage with.

A prototype makes it easier to have a conversation about your idea and get feedback on it so you’re not going into launch day blind. While it might feel like it slows down the process to add in time for testing prototypes, in the long run, you’ll save time and money by getting to the right idea faster.

“When you put something on the table—even if it’s a napkin sketch—it shifts the conversation,” Chris says. “People can focus on the idea rather than on each other’s opinions.”

This collaborative alignment is one of the biggest benefits of prototyping. It enables faster feedback, better clarity, and often more innovative outcomes.

The benefits of prototyping

Chris encourages people to view prototyping as a mindset, not a step. Rather than wait to test ideas until after they’re developed, use prototyping throughout the creative process.

“It’s not that you research and then design something and prototype it,” he says. “It’s more of a mindset that you should carry throughout every step of the design process.”

The benefits of prototypingBenefits include:

• Accelerating feedback loops

• Improving communication across teams

• Reducing risk by testing assumptions early

• Fostering user empathy

• Generating new ideas

• Communicate your ideas more effectively

Don’t hesitate to bring others into the process too. It gives you a broader set of feedback to work with and helps them see the value in prototyping. If more people in your organization can start to think a little bit more like a designer, advocating for your end users and thinking strategically about how to meet their needs, everyone will benefit.

Getting started with prototyping

There are many ways to prototype an idea for a digital product or service, from sketching on pen and paper to role-playing and giving personality and character to your prototype by anthropomorphizing it.

Chris recommends keeping early prototypes quick and scrappy. By starting with tools that are familiar to you and easy to use, you can quickly create something tangible that will allow you to gather feedback and learn what’s working and what’s not.

For example, draw different app interfaces on sticky notes. Stick them on a mobile phone and switch them out to show a colleague and get reactions.

Whether you’re designing a website or a physical product, prototypes can help you figure out which direction to go in before you start refining the details of your idea

Real-world example: Prototyping visitor engagement

IDEO worked on a project with the Holocaust Memorial Museum to design their visitor experience. An early hypothesis was that an app would encourage visitors to engage more deeply with stories of survivors. The team prototyped the app and found that visitors enjoyed it, but it also led to less conversation between visitors. So they prototyped a second hypothesis—that physical artifacts would encourage engagement and found that it led to much more discussion. 

This project surfaces another misconception: that prototyping is a final step before you launch a new product or a way to validate your ideas.

“It's not that you process your idea and then communicate it through a prototype,” Chris says. “You use prototyping to process the ideas themselves and to help you think through the idea.”

Prototyping in design thinking: Make it tangible

Interaction design a practice isn’t that established, so many people in the field come from different backgrounds. 

“Whether they were an architect that saw the value in working on user experience and interaction design or a graphic designer like myself or an industrial designer or even filmmakers—we're all providing inputs and perspective and lenses on how to think about interaction design in new and different ways,” he says.

You don’t need to be a designer to prototype. You just need the willingness to make your idea visible and the curiosity to see how others respond. As David Kelley puts it: "You can make anything tangible through a rough and rapid prototype."

Want to go deeper? Explore rapid, low-fidelity prototyping in our on-demand course Prototyping for Digital Experiences with Chris Nyffeler.