Multimedia prototypes of varying degrees of fidelity and interactivity could be a
powerful tool for early stage startups to validate their business model assumptions
especially product value proposition. This grounds on the prototype"s ability to
enhance user experience (UX) thereby making their feedback more accurate and
reliable. This article reports practical experiences with consultancy projects involving
European early stage startups focusing on the cocreation process of value proposition
innovation amid pandemic. This includes the challenges faced in interacting with
onsite customers, multimedia prototyping as a tool to foster remote customer
involvement, and different challenges involved in prototype-driven cocreation like
intellectual property rights, federal laws, motivation rewards, tool selection, and
balancing customer expectations. The involvement of remote customers is fostered by
the combination of varying degrees of fidelity and interactivity. Higher fidelity and
interactivity prototypes are more applicable when a startup has a continuously
increasing customer base, better market understanding, and customers having better
product understanding. The practical experience indicates that resource-constrained
startups could be greatly benefitted from the adoption of multimedia prototyping in
their market research. The multimedia prototype development technologies could be
easily adopted in startup business practices owing to zero purchase cost, ease of use,
and usefulness. Their adoption is expected to become a norm for the 'new normal” as
the role of multimedia prototypes is trivial for lean startups enhancing the value of
design thinking as well as customer development processes. However, there is an
urgent need to define a systematic process for the selection of prototype development
tools meeting the business needs and their seamless integration in startup business
practices, thereby leveraging across the wider spectrum of prototyping tools marke
