I'm going to make today's Positive Friday post directly related to UX and the way forward, out of this mess and into a sustainable, profitable future. There are a number of keys to success, one of which is prototyping

Prototyping is no longer a standard activity in the product development cycle and it needs to be. It is screamingly conspicuous in its absence

Prototyping is the safety net that protects your job, your income and your mental health, and I'm not overplaying this - it's that big a deal

Without prototyping, you are building the thing for real. You are gambling on everything by putting an untested design into production engineering and when that happens you are putting an unreasonable amount of pressure and stress onto your current and future selves to get it right first time

In our UX world of research and design, no-one gets it right first time. No-one. No matter how senior, how experienced, how awesome they are. This is why I constantly say that I'm learning as hard as anyone else. Every project is new, every project is different, every project has different users, needs and context. THERE IS NO PLAYBOOK!

Prototyping means being able to play around and test ideas and executions, without the pressure or stress

Because everyone is learning hard and there is no playbook, you fundamentally need ITERATIVE PROTOTYPING to act as a sandbox or lab to play and experiment in. To learn what works from failing quickly and trying new and alternative things.

No Product Manager in ANY industry goes straight to market without prototyping somewhere in their product development - but in IT and Digital it has become the industry standard, and we cannot let this continue. It's just stupid and ineffective.

UX, like many practices, is being redefined by vendor tooling, not the needs of the practitioner. No vendor has ever listened to the needs of the UX practitioner. The tools we have aren't UX tools and UX isn't being done as a result.

No-one wants to use Axure because it's too clunky but is a powerful proto tool, and Figma has awesome UX but has poor proto ability...

...and this has caused a prototype stalemate, where the issue has become forgotten and lost. This is how we've lost prototyping.

We need prototyping back as a fundamental BAU activity in product development. It's a major defense against AI. We need it yesterday.

Happy Positive Friday! Use prototyping to take the metaphorical gun away from your head, test and iterate, and you *will* express value, build the right thing, grow in the right direction and be happier.
#collected