Today I’m pleased to announce my new venture, Testbed. Some of you will have heard me talking about this, and I’ll have bothered a lot of you with requests for feedback and advice—thank you to all of those I have spoken with, you’ve all been very generous with your time and invaluable feedback. Here I wanted to take some time to outline some of the thinking behind the venture and some of our plans for the future. You can stay up to date via our mailing list, instagram or by following our Medium publication.
I firmly believe that creative and potentially world-changing ideas can come from anyone. Not just designers, engineers and artists, but also those working outside of those domains and on the front-line of experience. The hard parts are knowing which are the good, relevant ones and then getting those out into the world—not everyone has the tools, skills or resources to properly explore their ideas or move them onwards a step. Testbed’s mission is to help anyone to get their extraordinary ideas off the drawing board (or Powerpoint deck) and into reality, working with them to prototype and test them quickly and effectively.
It’s not just those without creative experience that need help. Sometimes as designers we have to work cross-discipline and need a little assistance understanding how a big idea can be expressed in ways that go beyond our training or domain knowledge. We’re here to provide that assistance.
We are currently in the process of building a workshop and knowledge-base focussed on rapid-prototyping tools and technologies that will enable us to breathe life into ideas in almost any format, from simple furniture prototypes to web-based applications to all-out physical/digital experiences. Most of our tools are built from scratch—we’re embracing the learning experience of building our own CNC, laser-cutter, workspace and more, and will document the process as we go.
Where it started
Over the past few years working in various creative and design agencies, I saw my role expand from that of a graphic designer—expected to have an opinion and a craft in expressing ideas visually—to a more multi-disciplinary designer, expected to have an expert opinion on everything from strategy to interiors to interactions. Personally I relished the challenges that the shift brought, and I have always felt that a designer should be multi-disciplinary by default. But it’s not always easy to embrace that shift.
The challenges come in exploring, understanding and communicating ideas that require expertise beyond your personal capabilities or experience. To do any of those three things you have to be working with the relevant tools in the relevant mediums: exploration requires first-hand and direct working with the relevant medium, not only so that the originator of the idea can begin to understand it better but also so that it can be tested for appropriateness and suitability with users; understanding of the limitations, pitfalls and benefits of the idea only come from rigorous exploration; and communication relies on a tangible anchor that all stakeholders can align their understanding against. In a situation in which only proposals have been made—instead of prototypes—one of three things can happen: you can fluke it and get a fantastic outcome that surpasses all expectations; you can let the idea die quietly as you have no idea how to take it further; or the idea fumbles its way to production, under-explored, misunderstood by yourself and stakeholders and next-to useless (or even insulting) for users. I have seen all of those three things happen at various points, and all could have been avoided by putting prototypes—and therefor users—at the centre of the design process. Testbed wants more excellent ideas to see the light of day, and less poor (or poorly executed) ideas to slip through the net. Only by realising ideas early through prototyping and subsequently testing them properly will the distinction be made.
How it developed
I have been trying to take my own advice over the past few months and have been loosely prototyping and testing my idea for Testbed. It’s been a truly eye-opening experience, and the initial thinking has become clearer and more focussed as a result.
Over the course of those discussions I’ve had to rethink who my potential customers would be, how I pitched the idea, how I framed up my services, and even re-thought the name multiple times (thanks Will).
There were also some wonderful, useful insights. One that was particularly interesting to me was the idea that most new technologies are waves to be caught or ignored—if you don’t catch the wave then don’t worry, there will be another novel technology along shortly, and you can jump on that one. This thought was surprisingly common and revealed that sometimes the extent of creative thinking with technology goes no further than a novelty, ‘we-did-it-first’ factor. There’s much more to be explored with technology as a means-to-an-end, a facilitator of experiences or part of a workflow, rather than the end or experience itself. I hope that Testbed can challenge some of the first-past-the-post mentality and help develop experiences with more direct and indirect value than sheer novelty.
Another thing that stuck with me was my friend Hector, quoting his mum: “you don’t go to art school to learn how to be an artist, you go there to learn how to think”. It’s something I think we all know, but rarely acknowledge. As designers we’re encouraged to be inventive and curious in our education, to apply our creativity in broad, boundless ways but also to be critical and open to new perspectives. Then when we enter the workplace this falls by the wayside as we apply our inventiveness within a tight discipline, on tight briefs. With Testbed we hope to make it easier to explore ideas that are outside of those tight bounds, and to bring fresh feedback and critical thinking back into the process.
Plans for the future
Currently we have our core five offerings: prototyping & testing; consulting & concepting; deep-dives; demo-days and workshops. We are also building our workshop and suite of tools and skills which we’d like to open up beyond our commercial offering. We plan to be able to offer short residencies for artists, makers and other curious people to use our tools and workshop to explore their own practise, and we encourage them to get in touch with proposals that can help us challenge our own thinking around design, technology and prototyping.
We’ll also be offering drop-in consulting sessions on occasional free-Fridays for anyone to run an idea past us, get advice on a project, or even just learn about our tools and our approach. We encourage you to follow our social media channels to find out when these sessions will be.
And we will also continue to update this Medium publication as a record of our progress and thinking. We hope to publish regular explorations into various technologies as foundations for creative exploration. So do keep checking in.
Consider Testbed a prototype itself: I expect the venture to morph and shift as time goes on, and I fully welcome any feedback, ideas or suggestions that will help us take it forwards.
And of course, if you need any help making your ideas real, then please, do get in touch.
