Create a first iteration of your product with the absolute minimum set of features that would make it valuable and useful – at least to early adopters.

Most new products or services are not completely new and different from existing ones. Many times there are other products and services that are close enough and, with some work, can be used to impersonate the new product you have in mind.

Take advantage of the customer traffic in an existing store (brick and mortar or online) to stick an artefact of your idea (it could be a one-off, even an empty box) on the shelves to see if people would buy it.

Offer a pretotype version of your product or service on a very limited time basis to see if there is any interest before making any long-term commitments.

Before committing to launch a new product or service formally and publicly on a large scale, test it in a smaller, more private and informal context to see if people are interested in it.

Through the “magic of movies” you can make products that don’t yet exist come to life and see how people react to them: Are they intrigued? Interested? Will they sign up to learn more?

Use human skills to simulate your product or service idea and determine if anyone will use it.

Create a non-operational version of your product and ask your potential market to use their imagination to pretend that it actually works to see if and/or how they would use it.

Test the Initial Level of Interest (ILI) in an existing but not yet broadly available/scalable product or service by creating artefacts that suggest greater availability (or scale).

Test the Initial Level of Interest (ILI) in a yet-to-be-developed product or service by creating artifacts that suggest that the product exists and it’s available to see if people would buy it.