4 Important Stages of IoT Prototyping

IoT Prototyping is the first step to build an IoT product. An ideal prototype consists of:

  • Hardware device
  • User interface such as web frontend or smartphone app
  • Backend software which implements logic of the business
  • Connectivity

The Internet of Things is going to manage our homes, production units, offices and many other processes. To avoid any type of risk of failure while building a new product, businesses begin by process of prototyping. However, prototyping an IoT product is different from the actual prototyping process.

Confusion to be avoided– IoT prototype products are quite complex as the hardware that you use to prototype is not what you actually use in mass-producing IoT products. There will be many third-party integrations that have to be considered as the software is complex.

 Building your own components -As there isn’t a defined road map to follow, you have to focus on paving your own way and innovations. One can’t solely rely on pre-existing architectures or libraries as developers will need to start from the scratch.However pre-built components will be available as the IoT industry grows.

Long term feedback loops and testing cycles – It is easy and simple to push the software to beta users and get feedback for any web or mobile applications. IoT products include a hardware and software layer, that needs to ship and deliver physical devices to your beta group. Furthermore, it is vital to provide detailed set up and user instructions as consumers aren’t familiar with IoT technologies. Generally, the testing and feedback is complex and longer when compared to traditional software products.

The 4 key stages of IoT Prototyping:

  1. Choose the toughest problem first: It is vital to prepare your strategy with regard to your product risks when prototyping your IoT product. If you are not sure about a device compatibility, that’s the task you should first focus on. This will help you make important decisions beforehand rather than spending months into the development cycle and ending up with a faulty product.
  1. Effective research & development: After understanding about the problems to be addressed in your prototype, you have to discover which technologies you are going to use to create the product, and this is just like an experimentation. In the process of your research, you will discover what technologies won’t work for a product.
  1. Start building: After figuring out the main problems you intend to solve and which type of technologies to use, you can start building. This is one of the critical stages of the prototyping process. The main focus is to start building early and power through the gap.
  1. Enhancing your product: Once your IoT prototype is up and functioning, start fixing the other remaining issues. The bugs might be hardware or software related. Some features may take longer time than expected; user interface may need tweaking and hardware may need improvement.
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