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SERVICE PROTOTYPE / PRETOTYPE

Service prototype is a tool for testing the service by observing the interaction of the
user with a prototype of the service put in the place, situation and condition where the
service will actually exist36. The objective is to verify what happens when some external
factors interfere during the service delivery, factors that it’s not possible to verify during
the preceding tests in the laboratory but that have a great impact on the user perception and experience 37.
The concept of service prototyping is used widely in service design community to iterate
the development process in order to obtain user feedback for early product-service
improvement. “Fail earlier fail cheaper” concept is being challenged by Pretotyping, a implementation even prior to prototyping to make sure you are building the right thing
before you build it right. Pretotyping38 is a way to test a product idea quickly and inexpensively by creating extremely simplified versions of that product to help validate the
premise that “If we build it, they will use it.”
One good example that Alberto Savoia explained the difference between prototyping
and pretotyping with a example of Jeff Hawkins’ use of a pretotype of a Palm Pilot to
validate the idea and determining a market need for a personal information manager
(well known as PIM). His goal was to determine if people would actually buy such a device before building an actual “prototype,” which would be time consuming and expensive.

36

Dan Saffer (2007), Designing for Interaction. Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices, New Riders Book

37

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