There is a window early in every product where changing your mind is nearly free. Devika builds interactive prototypes that let you test with real people weeks before a line of production code is written.
PathPoint: on-site maps and queue management for the sites consumer maps can’t see
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Early on, a flow gets redrawn in an afternoon and a feature gets cut in a conversation. Nobody has built anything, so nobody is defending anything.
Once code exists, changing direction means sunk cost, rework, and the quiet organisational pull toward continuing simply because you have started.
Prototyping exists to do as much of your thinking as possible while it is still cheap, and to make the decision that follows an easy one.
Changing your mind in a prototype costs an afternoon. Changing it after the build costs a quarter.
Not a slide deck. Not a static mockup. A working simulation of the product that responds to taps and clicks, moves between screens, and behaves closely enough to the real thing that people forget they are testing.
It looks and feels like the app. It just does not have a real database behind it.
That is the whole trick. Because there is no backend, we build it in days rather than months. Because it feels real, the feedback you get is real. People do not tell you what they would theoretically do. They try to do it, and you watch where they hesitate. Most work moves from wireframes to lo-fi to hi-fi prototypes, and the fidelity you need depends entirely on the question you are asking.
A prototype tells you if they understand it. Only a live product tells you if they will pay for it.
Knowing which questions a prototype answers is most of the value of running one.
Rapid prototyping is the cheapest form of product validation available to you, because it tests the idea before the build rather than after it. This is the most valuable and most skipped step in product development. Here is the sequence we run.
Every product idea rests on a belief about a customer. Write it down as a falsifiable statement. Aged care employers will use a swipe interface to shortlist candidates is testable. There is a gap in the market is not.
Not the whole product. The single sequence where the value lives.
Five to 8 people from the actual target group. Not colleagues, not friends. The pattern of failure becomes obvious remarkably quickly.
What people do and what they say they would do differ substantially. The silence while someone hunts for a button is worth more than any survey response.
Refine, pivot or stop. Set your acceptance criteria before you test, so the decision is not made on the loudest opinion in the room.
Five people trying your prototype will surface more real problems than 50 people answering questions about a concept.
Executives reasonably ask why the sample is so small, since it sounds statistically indefensible.
It is not a statistical exercise. Usability testing looks for defects rather than measuring a population, and defects repeat: the same confusing label stops most people who encounter it. Research by Nielsen Norman Group found that around 5 users surface the large majority of usability problems in a given interface, after which each additional session mostly reconfirms what you already saw.
If you want to measure preference, market size or willingness to pay, that is a different study needing a much larger sample. We will say so rather than overclaim what these sessions can tell you.
An interactive app prototype for investors does something a pitch deck structurally cannot. It moves the conversation from imagination to reaction.
A slide asks an investor to picture a product and trust your description of it. A prototype in their hands means they are evaluating something they have experienced. The questions change from what would this look like to how are you acquiring users, which is a much better meeting.
It also demonstrates things you cannot claim credibly on a slide: that you have thought through the actual product, that you can execute, and that you understand your user well enough to have designed for them specifically.
The same asset works for internal approval. If you are an executive seeking board sign-off or budget, a prototype turns an abstract proposal into something a room can respond to concretely, which usually shortens the approval cycle considerably.
Most engagements run 1 to 3 weeks, depending on scope.
You end with a tested prototype, evidence for your next decision, an asset you can pitch with, and a build scope grounded in observed reality rather than internal opinion. Where the answer is proceed, that scope feeds directly into MVP development and the UI/UX design phase, which is why the prototype shortens the build rather than delaying it.
For higher-risk technical questions we also build technical spikes, meaning small proofs that a hard integration or unproven capability actually works. A different kind of prototype answering a different kind of question, usually run alongside custom software scoping.
The clearest argument for prototyping we have. One Raceway approached Devika wanting a simple booking and management tool. Through consultation and early product work, the idea grew into something else entirely: a digital product licensable globally to other venues. The MVP was then scoped around 3 distinct user types, because that thinking happened early, when it was still cheap to change.
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Devika led a structured proof-of-concept phase before MVP, defining the freemium model and prioritising the core workflows needed to validate the product. That sequencing is why a full PropTech platform reached production in 12 weeks rather than discovering its scope mid-build.
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A VR art therapy experience built in 3 months, extending an Evenness suite whose earlier applications were validated through research at the University of Western Sydney. Now on the Meta Store for personal use and deployed commercially with organisations.
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An augmented reality city planning app tested in the field with Wollongong City Council, Liverpool City Council and City of Canterbury Bankstown. Validation with actual decision-makers, in the actual context of use, rather than in a meeting room.
Read the Case Study →One to 3 weeks for most. Simple single-flow prototypes can be done in days.
Yes. That is one of the main reasons clients commission them, and the prototype is yours to use however you like.
No, and it should not. Prototypes are built for speed, not durability. What carries forward is the validated design and the evidence, which is exactly what makes the subsequent MVP build faster and less risky.
Then it saved you a build budget and several months. That is a successful prototype, even though it does not feel like one at the time.
Yes. We recruit from your target group, run the sessions and report the findings with a recommendation.
Absolutely. Testing a significant new feature or redesign before committing engineering time is one of the highest-return uses of prototyping.
By removing scope. Most prototypes end with fewer features than they started with, and a clearer sequence. That difference usually exceeds the cost of the prototype itself.
We will build the fastest way to test it, and tell you honestly what the result means.