The role of prototyping in product development

Companies want to increase the innovation degree and shorten development time of products in order to remain competitive. To obtain this goal, prototyping has become a decisive tool. Traditionally, prototypes get produced in a workshop. With the emergence of rapid prototyping and virtual prototyping, the range of prototyping methods has expanded. Research/service centers provide technical knowledge in order to support designers during prototyping. Despite these efforts and promising expectations, many companies have not significantly improved their development process, because they apply prototyping randomly and do not have a systematic method in applying prototyping adequately in the different stages of the development process. The industrial design center of HOWEST has performed a research project, sponsored by Flanders in Shape, on a systematic approach to apply rapid, traditional and virtual prototyping in the design process. The project resulted in a roadmap based on four design stages. The obtained research results were validated by designers in several industrial cases