Hello and welcome to the first lesson in this new module, which is called: Why It’s Smart to Build a Prototype.
And we’re starting the shift from designing your course to developing your course.
Why Doing Your Best Can Be a Bad Idea
By this point in the programme, you should have a draft of your course blueprint, showing all the assets you think you’ll need in your finished course.
And with everything already mapped out in such detail, you could jump straight into content creation, and focus on making the best product you can.
But here’s why that’s usually a bad idea.
When designing your course, it’s almost impossible to get everything right the first time.
The content you just mapped out is really just your best guess of what your target market needs. But you haven’t tested it in the real world yet.
So creating the best possible version of that content is premature.
Think Like an Engineer, Not an Artist
That’s why I encourage a mental shift, from an artist mindset to an engineer mindset.
Because it’s easy to think about your course as you might some other creative project like a painting or a sculpture.
You work on it behind closed doors until it’s perfect – or as close as possible – before letting anyone see it.
And once it’s finished, it’s finished, right? After all, few artists make changes to their masterpieces based on feedback from gallery visitors!
However, in reality, creating a course isn’t like creating a work of art. It’s more like creating a functional object like a kite.
Why a Course is Like a Kite (Not a Painting)
Yes, you might start out with some ideas about your kite’s design, and thoughts on the best materials to use, but until you build it you’ll have no clue how well it will fly.
So what do you do? Well, you build a first version, take it out to a local field or hillside, and see what happens when you let the wind catch it.
Once you’ve seen it in action, you can make adjustments. Some might be minor, like tweaking the position of the control line. Others might be more major, like changing the shape of the main body.
But when it soars into the sky that’s when you know your design is effective.
That first version of the kite is like your course prototype, and that maiden flight is like your beta launch – it’s your first chance to see how it performs in the real world.
Why Good is Better than Great When Prototyping
There are other parallels too. For instance, you needn’t build a prototype kite to the same standards as the production version. It just needs to be good enough to test.
For instance, you wouldn’t use an expensive, high-performance material for the kite’s “sail” right away. If the shape turns out to be flawed, it’s a waste of material.
Likewise, fixing the material as securely as possible to the frame would be overkill for a few short test flights, and making small adjustments will be harder too.
It’s the same with your course. If you spend hours creating super slick content, you risk investing time in assets that need to be revised or even discarded.
Now, that doesn’t mean producing shoddy content, as we’ll see in the next lesson. It just means being smart about how you choose to create that content.
The Big Advantage Courses Have Over Kites
You can’t launch a partially-built kite, but you can launch a partially-built course. Just as long as students have what they need, when they need it.
And that’s your goal with your course prototype: creating just enough content, to a “just good enough” standard, so you can start getting feedback from beta students on the fundamentals of your course.
Fundamentals like the core concepts, methods, examples, analogies, templates, and so on.
The purpose of your beta launch is to create a test environment for uncovering any gaps and mis-steps in your prototype.
So, how much content is enough?
How Much Content Is Enough?
Practically speaking, you’ll need enough content for at least the first week or two of your course schedule.
Once the course is up and running, if you’re an experienced content creator, you can stay one step ahead of your students and create any remaining content just before it’s needed.
But most people will find that pretty stressful. One small hiccup can throw out your whole schedule and leave students wondering when their next lesson will drop.
I recommend having several weeks of content “in the bag” before launching. That’s because:
- It gives you time to get into your content creation “groove” before commiting to a timetable
- It gives you some contingency time in case problems crop up while your beta is running
How much time you need to create that launch content depends on your experience but also on the format you choose.
Some formats are more time-consuming than others and we’ll look at your options in the next lesson.
We’ll also answer the important question of how good is good enough?
Do You Always Need a Prototype?
But before we wrap up this opening lesson, let’s answer one more question:
Do you always need to build a prototype?
Actually, no, you don’t!
If you’re creating a smaller course, like a mini course, creating a prototype and running a beta is usually overkill. Your beta schedule would be finished before it’s barely even started!
Also, if your course closely follows a programme you’ve run successfully before, like an in-person or live-virtual training, you could skip the prototype and the beta.
That said, I still recommend getting feedback from a few trusted people before a more public launch. Just to make sure you haven’t missed anything obvious.
The point is that you’re creating content with the intent that this is the final version, not just a stopgap version you’re creating to get feedback”.