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I recommend reading Alberto Savoia's book, "The Right It: Why So Many Ideas Fail and How to Make Sure Yours Succeed" One of the examples that Savoia provides i
by maxharris 5y ago
I recommend reading Alberto Savoia's book, "The Right It: Why So Many Ideas Fail and How to Make Sure Yours Succeed"
One of the examples that Savoia provides in his book is especially helpful to recall here:
Back in the 1960s, IBM was trying to figure out if they should make a massive investment in building a speech recognition product. Rather than betting the company on an expensive idea without being certain of the market for it, they simulated the speech recognizer by putting a secretary in another room with a mic, leaving the test subject with the impression that their commands were going directly into the computer in the room.
By doing this, IBM figured out that even if they made a perfect speech recognizer, their customers wouldn't use it! They were concerned about privacy, found typing to be faster and more precise, etc. Rather than investing huge sums of cash on a dud, they were able to put it towards the System 360 line, which turned out rather well :)
- empressplay 5y agoRight, this is really what's meant by the phrase "fake it until you make it" -- not that you should make claims that aren't true (even though they may be someday) but that you should simulate automating processes in a similar fashion to your anecdote before actually spending the time and money to automate them, even though up front you're likely to lose money on having humans do what you eventually want computers (or robots, in the case of Amazon warehouses) to do.
- heyitsguay 5y agoSure, but the difference between savvy product testing and charlatanry is doing this as part of a quiet internal study vs. on stage at a massive public demonstration.
- flatiron 5y agoI’ve done that before and referred to it as “wizard of oz testing”
- stemlord 5y agoThis is called a prototype
- nwiswell 5y agoIs it? I would think a prototype must bear some resemblance to the final product (as the proto- comes from the Greek root prōtos meaning "first" or "primitive"). I think this is just clever market validation testing.
- stemlord 5y agoIt completely bears resemblance to the proposed final product, no? Market validation or tech validation, both different things to prototype for.
- nwiswell 5y ago> It completely bears resemblance to the proposed final product, no? Since the final product is computer software: no, I don't think a secretary bears much resemblance.
- ludamad 5y agoThe key part being emphasized is that the audience believes its more functional than it is. The word prototype is ambiguous on that part
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- refurb 5y agoI've heard it referred to as a "pretotype" (god I hate words like that).
- pvaldes 5y agoPretotype. Interesting word; preto means dark so it fits really well.