The $1 Prototype: A Modern Approach to Mobile UX Design and Rapid Innovation for Material Design, iOS8, and RWD

In essence, the $1 Prototype is about institutionalizing failure—in its cheapest and most expedient form. The faster the product team fails, the faster it gets back on track and addresses solving the customer’s challenge with realistic, functional solutions.

If the $1 Prototype methodology were simply about cutting costs, I would consider it a failure. Instead, cost cutting is but a fringe benefit of this methodology. The primary benefit is its laser-focus on the customer, with rapid investigation and modeling of the goals, activities, and tasks. Instead of being focused on deliverables (that is on producing expensive, time-consuming and flashy wireframes and prototypes) the product team is focused on most efficient ways of finding the opportunity to help potential customers, producing a working prototype solution and validating this solution with real people.