Why?

Demonstrate the desirability or the feasibility of your idea or design.

How?

Create a prototype or demonstration of a single critical aspect of your idea to test if it really offers a good solution to the problem you are solving. You can take different aspects into account, like effectiveness, efficiency, user experience, technical limitations or interaction within the context of the user.

Ingredients

• A willingness to tackle the most risky/difficult parts first.
• Prototyping materials and tools to realize or simulate the idea.
• Knowing what is important to test and/or communicate the idea and what aspects are superfluous.

In practice

In the design of an app that is supposed to be used outside, a proof of concept demo might for example test what happens when it rains or the user’s fingers are cold.