In my another article, 5 Truths of Doing, I argue that taking your idea beyond talking and into doing as early as you can simply accelerates your innovation; and the best way to make that leap is with prototypes.

Prototypes are not just the preserve of car makers, space scientists or rockstar designers, they are an essential part of the evolution of any new service, product or even process; which means if you're trying to create any of these, you should know how to prototype.

Chuck increased remote working into the mix, and.... boom! - no difference whatsoever. Why let distributed teams come between you and your innovation?

So here are 5 ways to prototype by remote, for transformation in any business, from creating a new workflow for turning orders into deliveries to rethinking the future of pet insurance.

Sticky Notes

They're the stuff of digital agencies the world over, and they have a place in your business too. Each note can be a point in a process, a role in an organisation, or even a button on an interface. And of course you can shift them around your board, and use different colours for meanings.

By remote, use one of the whiteboarding tools like Miro or Stormboard, or you can open a shared collaborative document in a programme like Google Slides, or Powerpoint. (TIPS: pre-prepare some 'sticky note' text boxes kept at the bottom of the slide to speed up the build and maintain momentum of your ideation session, and set a really big custom slide size.)

Sketch

Sketches take a concept to a shared visual reality and eliminate the ambiguities inherent in different people interpreting verbal descriptions differently. ("Oh I see what you mean now!").

Here is a good a guide to running successful sketching sessions.

By remote, use Sketchtogether, Aww App or Ziteboard. (TIP: for live online drawing you may find it easier to to use a touchscreen device)

Role play

Also known as 'bodystorming', role play is a great way to act out a process or series of interactions. In a body storming session, each participant takes a different role, eg. client and customer, but you can also play the role of a piece of software, acting on a command given by pressing a button on a screen.

The big benefit of this technique is that it encourages empathy: each role player needs to see the challenge from a particular perspective, and in doing so you can quickly identify insights, pain points or motivations in a process or interaction sequence.

By remote, it requires no bespoke software, it's engaging and fun too. (TIP: get one colleague to be the note-taker, who doesn't take any other role, just records the session in detail.)

More details on Role Play Prototyping here.

Presentation Software

If you want to take your idea for a digital interface (an app, website, or an online workflow) to the next level, a really simple and easy method is to use your favourite presentation software (Keynote, Powerpoint or Google Slides).

You can give the presentation custom dimensions to mimic a desktop, or mobile screen. And while you create wireframes for each page, you can make buttons which link to other pages. That means that you can create an experience which simulates how your future tool might function, without writing any code.

By remote, you can share your prototype and allow others to use it, annotate it, or make a copy to adapt.

(TIP: start in black & white, so you focus on the user experience, rather than the design. You can add design elements like colours and fonts later.

Here's a high fidelity early mock-up in Keynote of the ITV News website from 2012. We showed what scroll behaviours were, but could have added more clickable areas linking to other pages.

If you want to go one step further, you can use software like Invision, Sketch or Omnigraffle.

Heath Robinson

Pic: A Heath Robinson cartoon [Dreamstime 19626552]

That's my short-hand for a technique which cobbles together a prototype using pre-existing tools working together. There's no reason why your prototype needs to be as absurd as the English cartoonist's, however.

For example, you don't need to build a full size database, when a spreadsheet will do to start with. Why jump into a building chat function when whatsapp might do to start with? Whip up a simple version of your web service with Google Sites, or connect services together with tools like Zapier. It's all about getting something up and running which resembles the service you're looking to build fast enough to start learning from users in the wild, and closely enough to give you meaningful insights.

By remote, build it then discuss it online. (TIP: it's important to manage expectations with your end users. Your prototype won't be perfect, or pretty, but it will be hugely valuable for learning and creating the eventual service. Pick a small team of 'early adopters' - colleagues who are up for the experiment. You may find some colleagues will struggle with the ambiguity and imperfection - bring them in later! Imagine jumping straight into building something at greater expense only to find that either a) you've built the wrong thing, or b) the prototype was actually good enough to do the job.)