Prototyping to learn, Learning to prototype

Carola Verschoor [@carolaverschoor] is advisory board member of The Prototype Factory, the views expressed in this blog post are her own.

Prototyping is one of those hype words that get thrown around in meeting rooms, innovation plans and strategic sessions in businesses around the world. An average prototyping session feels like a high-energy and colourful endeavour which makes great photos on anyone’s annual report. And if you’re in consulting, clients flock around your offering in the hope that you will make prototyping work for them and deliver an enjoyable time as well as concrete results, which are elusive in meeting after meeting, week after week, month after month.

What makes prototyping popular is its power to engage.

What makes prototyping valuable is its ability to make ideas concrete.

What makes prototyping useful is the traction it creates through applied learning and validation.

A positive view of the future

Makers believe in their ability to change the future, as David Kelley poignantly formulates in this short video.

When you have a prototype in hand, the discussion becomes less personal and more centered on possibilities for improvement. Others can interact with your idea in the ‘safe space’ that is created by the prototype itself. So long as you are able to take your positive view of the future, put it out there and engage with others: your view of the future will find channels to manifest in materialize in ways that add value to others.

This is important, because the value of a prototype is in its practical relevance not just the power of the idea.

Iteration delivers understanding

As a co-author and collaborator for This is Service Design Doing I felt it was really important to share with the service design community how prototyping contributes to make ideas concrete: “Prototyping is great to help us understand by doing. At each iteration, you pivot into a new version by integrating the learnings of the previous version of the prototype.” This is quite crucial to the development process. As you prototype you put things out there,  and start reducing uncertainty by producing versions that are grounded in reality.

Regardless of your budget, ability or level of fidelity of your prototype; (ie regardless of your level of design expertise) prototypes are exploration tools, validation tools or probes, communication and explanation tools. Or maybe all of those in one.

As we share, improve and iterate: prototypes allow us to condense all of the wisdom of those who interact with it into concrete solutions that crystalize the value into a ‘form’ (be it a future product, service, interaction, etc)

All learning is applied learning

Human beings are wired for action learning. When our curiosity is triggered, we are inclined to want to ‘do’ something about it. Whether it be inquiry, making, interacting, or reflecting. This is why prototyping is so essential to the act of creating.

Somewhere along the way we have gotten stuck in meetings. The movement being generated by those of us who feel meetings are an energy drain is gaining traction. Like this initative to forbid powerpoint or this initiative to cancel meetings if no prototypes are brought in and of course, the well known Jeff Bezos approach of the six-page narrative.

The thing is this: when what we share are conceptual constructs of our ideas in the form of words, words, words, then it is entirely possible that what other people are making out of those words is something entirely different that what we intended. There is a false-positive sense of understanding. Because we cannot know for sure what the mental representation of our ideas is in other people’s heads. 

When what we share is concrete, applied, interactive: then we move from a simply conceptual transfer of ideas to a tangible validation of understanding. And with this, we learn together. So that we can build business and generate value together. 

Prototypes are unifiers, catalysts and possibility shapers all in one.

The Prototype Factory

Some time ago, I was asked by Tycho and Jeroen to help them prototype their own future. They are the founders of a small Dutch startup that converts ideas into digital products. 

They ensure that prototyping is not only a buzzword. They turn it into the reality of how their clients (many of them large corporations) work.  Their process is alchemic because it is explorative, agile and concrete in a flow of only a couple of days. They work well as a duo because they combine entrepreneurship, design and programming which are essential skills in any digital endeavour. What they do is a bit of a utopic dream for most corporates, which is what makes them so interesting to their clients. Creating a solid foundation for digital products is something that the Prototype Factory is able to deliver on, and which typically would cost their clients months of meetings. I am proud to be in their Advisory Board and am sure they will continue to grow and thrive and do great things.

Prototyping your future

So yes, you can hire the help of experts. That can be a great way to step up into the world of prototyping, especially if you feel like you're stuck in discussions, endless debates and meetings. But you can also simply start by doing. There is only one wrong way of prototyping, which is being passive and giving lip service to it. There are a million ways to do it well, and all of them involve making, interacting and iterating. 

As the saying goes: the best way to anticipate the future it to create it. Prototyping is a wonderful way to shape your future into working and workable solutions. Don't wait. If ever there was a time for prototyping: it is right now!