Pretotyping: The Step Before Prototyping That Most Teams Skip

Let’s get this out of the way: pretotyping isn’t a spelling mistake. It’s not “prototype” with a few missing letters. Pretotyping is a deliberate and powerful concept coined by Alberto Savoia in his book Pretotype It: Make Sure You Are Building the Right It before You Build It Right.

Where prototyping asks, “Can we build it?”, pretotyping asks the far more important question: “Should we build it?”

Prototypes help us test usability, flow, and design craft. Pretotypes help us validate demand before design or engineering effort even begins. As Savoia points out, most products don’t fail because they couldn’t be built—they fail because nobody wanted them in the first place.

Why Pretotyping Gets Skipped

Teams love prototypes. They’re polished, they’re presentable, they feel real. Stakeholders can click through them and imagine the finished product. Pretotypes, on the other hand, are scrappy and unpolished by design. They’re meant to be quick, cheap, and disposable.

And that’s exactly why we avoid them. Pretotyping can feel “too simple” to put in front of an executive or client. But that scrappiness is the point. If we skip it, we risk polishing beautiful prototypes for ideas that never had any real demand to begin with.

The Hidden Pretotype: MVP

Here’s the twist. Most organizations already use a pretotype framework without realizing it: the Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

At its origin, MVP was a pure preto technique. It asked: What’s the smallest thing we can do to prove our hypothesis? Sometimes that meant a landing page, a fake door, or even a demo video. MVP was never about shipping—it was about learning.

But over time, MVP drifted. Today, it usually means “phase one of launch.” We prototype the hell out of what was meant to be a pretotype, polishing something that was supposed to be scrappy.

The lesson? Pretotyping isn’t foreign. We already do it—we’ve just lost sight of its original purpose.

Core Preto Frameworks

From Savoia’s book, here are some of the most useful pretotyping tools:

• Fake Door
  Add a button, ad, or link that promises a feature. Track how many people click. If no one clicks, the idea might not be worth building.

• Mechanical Turk
  Simulate automation with humans behind the curtain. Customers think the software is working, but you’re faking the backend to measure demand.

• Pinocchio
  A non-functioning physical model. Think of a phone made of wood or clay, used just to see if people would hold, carry, or show interest.

• Infiltrator
  Instead of building a whole new system, run the idea through existing tools. For example, test your “new platform” idea as a simple newsletter.

• MVP (as it was meant)
  Not phase one of shipping. The smallest thing you can test to validate or kill a hypothesis.

These frameworks aren’t about polish. They’re about speed, evidence, and reducing waste.

Why Pretotyping Matters for Research

Pretotyping reframes research around behavior, not opinions. Instead of asking:

• “Would you use this?”

• “Do you like this idea?”

…we measure what people actually do. Do they click? Do they sign up? Do they return?

This kind of evidence is far more valuable than opinions collected in a survey or focus group. Pretotyping helps researchers, designers, and product teams focus on evidence before effort.

The Mindset Shift

Pretotyping requires humility. It asks us to be comfortable with scrappiness, to embrace speed over polish, and to see experiments as learning tools, not deliverables.

So the next time your team rushes to prototype, pause. Ask: Could a pretotype answer this faster? Chances are, yes. And if your gut says it feels “too simple to be taken seriously,” that’s exactly when you should do it.

Because pretotyping isn’t just a tool. It’s a mindset. One that saves time, reduces waste, and makes sure we’re building the right it—before we worry about building it right.