Meanings
- gerundparticiplepresentpresent participle and gerund of pretotype
- neologismThe process of building pretotypes to test the viability of a product before attempting to actually prototype it.
With pretotyping, you never have to say "Sorry, it's not worth experimenting with that idea," because there are hardly any barriers to entry.
2014, Hugh Thompson, Bob Sullivan, Getting Unstuck: Break Free of the Plateau Effect, →ISBN2 more examples
Pretotyping differs from prototyping in that the main objective of prototyping is to answer questions related to building the product: Can we build it? Will it work as expected? How much will it cost to build? The purpose of pretotyping is to answer questions about the product's appeal and usage: Would people want this product? Will they use it as expected?
2013, Penny Pullan, James Archer, Business Analysis and Leadership: Influencing Change, →ISBN, page 129Different techniques can be used to crash-test software when the product is not yet finalized (this comes from the pretotyping approach by Alberto Savoia [Savoia12]):
2014, Nicolas Gouy, Agile with Guts, →ISBN, page 90
Cite this entry
pretotyping. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/pretotyping
“pretotyping.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/pretotyping. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “pretotyping,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/pretotyping.
Source: pretotyping on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.