Shaping Your Ideas
Design is the activity of turning your ideas into value proposition prototypes. It is a continuous cycle of prototyping, researching customers, and reshaping your ideas. Design may start with prototyping or with customer discovery. The design activity feeds into the testing activity that we explore in the next chapter (see section 3. Test).
Starting points for new or improved value propositions may come from anywhere. It could be from your customer insights, from exploration of prototypes, or from many other sources. Be sure not to fall in love with your early ideas, because they are certain to transform radically during prototyping, customer research, and testing.
Shape your ideas with quick, cheap, and rough prototypes. Make them tangible with napkin sketches, ad-libs, and Value Proposition Canvases. Don’t get attached to a prototype too early. Keep your prototypes light so you can explore possibilities, easily throw them away again, and then find the best ones that survive a rigorous testing process with customers.
Inform your ideas and prototypes with early customer research. Plough through available data, talk to customers, and immerse yourself in their world. Don’t show customers your value proposition prototypes too early. Use early research to deeply understand your customers’ jobs, pains, and gains. Unearth what really matters to them to prototype value propositions that are likely to survive rigorous testing with customers.
