Prototyping as Practice in the Circular Food Innovation Lab
Welcome to Learning out Loud! This is where CFIL collaborators reflect on what we’ve been learning and trying in this experimental space. Thanks for joining us on our journey, and if you have any thoughts on what you’re reading we’d be happy to hear from you!
In the Circular Food Innovation Lab (CFIL), we are largely using the prototyping process to experiment with potential solutions related to preventing wasted food and building equitable circular futures for Vancouver’s food system. So far this is the deepest we’ve gone into prototyping at the Solutions Lab, and there have been a lot of learnings along the way about what is actually a prototype, and in what ways are they useful.
What is a prototype?
A prototype is a tangible or experiential representation of an idea. It took me a long time to really understand what that means in practice, as the tools I was more familiar with were in many ways pre-prototyping tools, well suited for concept development and sketching. Whereas a concept sketch might illustrate some key aspects of the idea and how it could work, a prototype is a manifestation of a part of the concept that users can actually experience. Two guiding questions that have helped me in discerning whether or not we have a prototype are: What are users interacting with? How are we making the concept real for them?
Prototyping in complex challenge spaces
The act of prototyping seems more graspable when it’s in the context of product, service or interaction design. Learning how to prototype in this complex systemic space, and to prototype policies, frameworks, collaborations, enacting new paradigms, etc. requires a different way of thinking about how to make these testable, experiential things than many designers and others know how to do. As we navigate a lot of ambiguity and confusion around how to prototype for systemic interventions, we’re learning that there are a few different functions that prototyping serves when applying it to transformative public sector innovation. Below are four practices that have emerged as we prototype in CFIL.
Prototyping as solutions rehearsal
Bridging from design approaches, this function of prototyping is perhaps more familiar to many readers. Building on the definition above, practicing prototyping looks like building low-resource “mock-ups” of potential solutions and testing them with users to answer early questions about whether or not this idea is promising, and what kinds of roles or interactions might be involved in this solution if it were scaled. For civil servants who largely draw on typical project management tools, policy analysis and planning processes, practicing experimentation can be a highly useful tool for identifying early on important considerations for a conceived solution (and in some cases revealing that it is not at all a direction we should be pursuing). Prototyping gives us permission to try, learn and fail before we’ve poured all our resources into a solution.
Prototyping as systemic teacher
The less anticipated role of prototyping that has emerged in this lab is learning more about the system and the users. Since we are co-designing with business collaborators in the food sector, we have to make sure that the prototype itself is something that is feasible, interesting, and appropriate for business collaborators to interact with. We have built many prototypes that take a long time, and sometimes never get to be tested owing to particular lines of approval needed, managers/staff not having time for them, etc. In this way the prototypes are revealing to us where there are stuck points in the system, and what might need to be confronted in order for this concept to even be testable. Regardless of whether or not the prototype actually gets tested, they are highlighting different mindsets, systems and structures, and behavioral patterns at play. In this way prototyping serves to continuously challenge assumptions that we’re making about how solutions “ought to” work, and shows us how deeply entangled certain aspects of the challenge are that it becomes less and less possible to focus on one singular facet of the challenge without also needing to address others.
Prototyping as action enabler
When confronting a complex challenge, it’s easy to stay stuck in the thinking and analytical space about why things are stuck. In many ways, those working in the public sector are trained to analyze a problem and less versed in how to actually do something about it. Since prototyping is hands-on and requires experiential and embodied actions from those involved in testing, it can be a useful way to shift from thinking into doing. This serves to deepen people’s accountabilities for doing something about a problem.
Prototyping as point of entry/departure
As much as we have tried to create distinct concepts that are fractals of our larger How Might We question in the lab, we are finding that once we start diving into experimentation with business collaborators that priorities, challenges, and potential solution directions overlap in a tangled fractaled mess. For example, one of our distinct prototypes is called Reframe, which is partly about how to reframe customers’ relationship to food through shifting language, encouraging customers to choose produce that is still good for cooking or freezing, and invite them to be a part of prolonging freshness and uses of food. Even though the idea of shifting language is tied to the Reframe concept, we find it comes up as a recurring challenge in many others, and that our ways of talking about food, circularity, “waste”, and so forth need to drastically shift on a systemic level in order for us to imagine different possibilities. Conversely, as the Reframe concept has evolved, it has at times looked like other concepts and it’s hard to see how they are distinct from one another. And maybe the point is that they’re not supposed to be.
Through this experience I am beginning to see the distinct prototypes as points of departure into the messy non-linear entangled relationships of the system. Because that can be so daunting and overwhelming, prototyping can be a way of creating more easily accessible portals that enable collaborators to come along on this journey of emergence, and also to participate in imagining possible realities where we have become unstuck. In this way I see prototypes as points of entry into the complexity of the current system, as well as points of departure into a space where transformation of the system is possible. I’m reminded of this quote from Restoring the Kinship Worldview from Barbara Alice Mann who contrasts linear thinking with circular understanding of Indigenous peoples:
“As I see it, the root of the difficulty is that, whereas Westerners are linear thinkers, Turtle Islanders are cluster thinkers, who grasp reality in terms of natural, self selecting bunches, handfuls of this or that, in halves aligned with the ultimate clusters of the Cosmos Twinship. Each half of the cosmos, be it Blood or Breath, endlessly replicates its essence by spinning out fractals, large and small, with those of each cluster in necessary coordination with their twin fractals in the other half, in the infinite process of balancing.”
Prototyping is a way of understanding and working with these handfuls of this or that in the system.
Keep an eye out for our upcoming posts which take a deeper dive into each of the concepts we have been prototyping.
Disclaimer: the opinions and perspectives expressed within each of these posts are solely the author’s and do not reflect the opinions and perspectives of all CFIL participants.
