Prototyping to learn
Last week, we had a fun activity (sumo dogs) led by Francisco Tenente, founder of 3DWays where he shared his prototyping philosophy (we can prototype everything; it’s a mindset; it’s about iterations and learning).
Indeed, you can prototype everything!!! Physical and digital products, environment, services and roles, brands, user experience and business models…
Prototyping is a way to learn, and learn fast: what works or don’t work, but also what we don’t know.
Sumo dogs’ activity: prototyping in practice
Teams jumped in into making with a collaborative spirit:
Debrief:
- Remember to test early and in context; but we often forget (none of the teams did!)
- Constraints as generative: Time constraints and materials
- You need to test multiple ideas rather than only one. But it’s hard as we tend to want to focus only on one.
- Iteration happened but was minimal: it’s hard to let go of an idea, especially if it “works”
- Building to think: things you did not think of emerge as you start building
- Observing others’s successes and mistakes is a great way to learn
- How to organize? In sub-groups to work in parallel and reconvene.
Why prototype?
- To learn fast and early: to save time and money, and build confidence in your idea (to convince a client, your boss, someone in your team, etc.).
- To get users’ feedback: Don’t forget to test your prototypes with users.
- To avoid emotional attachment (don’t invest too long in an idea before testing it).
To advance your design. Give you a process through milestones.
- To express your concepts to avoid mis-communicating your intent: “Never come to a meeting without a prototype.” Dennis Boyle, IDEO
- To collaborate and co-create with clients and / or users.
Three mantras of prototyping:
1. Build to think
2. Fail early and often to succeed sooner
3. The 3 R’s: rough, rapid and right.
How to prototype?
- Paper prototypes are great to first test ideas about flow and interface for digital products.
- Videos and role playing can also be great to show the experience.
- A famous prototyping Video by IDEO Toy Lab. They showed it to the senior management and got their approval for an App which became one of the most successful app for
- Bodystorming
- Live prototypes (e.g. pop up stores) allow you to test some ideas in the “native context”.
- Wizard of Oz allows you to provide an experience to the users without building / developing the back end. To know more, check D-school method card. Live prototypes and Wizard of Oz techniques are great tools to quickly test an idea.
- Check also this example of how IDEO NY design conversations and use Chatbots as prototyping tools.
- Digital simulations (AR/VR for prototyping).
- Design Fiction and Future casting:
- Design Fiction at IDEO: https://www.ideo.com/journal/prototype-the-future-of-your-business-with-this-4-step-design-exercise
- IKEA Kitchen Design Fiction: https://www.ideo.com/case-study/designing-the-future-kitchen
- Streetheart Prototype Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G3xL1afbBs
- Future casting by Frog Design: https://www.fastcompany.com/3065080/frogs-5-steps-to-predicting-the-future
- Future casting by FOOSSA: https://foossa.com/future
My tips for prototyping:
1. Always start by defining what is the question? In other words, state your assumptions. This is the only way for you to learn something from the prototyping.
2. Learn to deal with ambiguity
3. Test and be ready to start again. Iterate, iterate, iterate!
