From the Scientific Method to the Prototyping Method
I’m going to introduce the concept of prototyping as a means to create ideas and knowledge more effectively during a project. It’s been applied in scientific research, conservation projects or trying to run a community project and at vizzuality we think it’s a really important, but often over-looked, stage of software development. I hope you find it useful and can start integrating it into your own work.
What is a prototype?
Prototyping is a process of bringing people together, discussing a problem and moving towards solutions. It’s most fruitful when it brings together stakeholders, users, researchers, designers and programmers into an open conversation where they can tackle challenges without fear. It channels the drive and ideas of partners towards innovative and effective solutions. Prototyping doesn’t aim to create proofs of concept or minimum viable products: it’s a playground for collaboration that challenges assumptions and sets new goals. The prototype itself is the object around which all the actors involved in the making can talk freely to each other.
In the last few years the notion of the “prototype” has gained increasing relevance in large scale project development, and is commonly used as an initial stage of learning about the problem to be solved. It’s discovery by making. It can also be used throughout the project cycle, to solve problems noted from user testing or to generate ideas for new features outside the straitjacket of a minimum viable product or list of deliverables.
Prototyping as a modern method of producing knowledge.
For most of the last millennium we have produced knowledge through experiment and experience, following ideas expressed by Roger Bacon in 1268. He argued there were “two ways of acquiring knowledge, one through reason, the other by experiment,” and argued that experimentation should come to the fore to “annihilate doubt” and establish fact. This broke from classical science, where philosophy and physics were regarded as two sides of the same coin. The world of physical things was not as important as the theory, hence experiments were neither necessary nor common.
These ideas blossomed during the enlightenment and the industrial revolution; science was focused on demonstrating facts over axioms, using the experiments as its main driver. Koch’s “scientific method” is arguably the pinnacle document of this commitment to unbiased proofs. Experimentalism came along with a whole new choreography of knowledge, of its places, its actors, its procedures and its artifacts. This changed the world forever and determined the role of technology in the years to come.
Over the last few years a wave of innovations have hit the shore, striking not only the castles of science, technology and policy but also the homes of millions of citizens, spreading all sorts of new literacies that enabled them to actually build their dreams. Led by Open Culture, enabled by the internet and smart devices, and deeply rooted in all sorts of new concepts from Crowdsourcing to Hackerism, it challenged the pillars of intellectual property and industrial society.
The Prototyping Method.
In my experience, I see four key elements of the prototyping that demarcate it from previous eras: the motives, the methods, the artefacts produced and the actors involved. Each of them has necessitated a move away from experimentalism to prototyping to produce knowledge.
- MOTIVE: We are involved with ‘matters of concern’, not ‘matters of fact’. People are driven to solve major world problems, not just to know the truth or prove a new fact. As such, there is also the motive to ensure things are used, rather than producing something for it’s own sake.
- METHOD: People want to solve problems by making, by hacking, by mixing and mangling. It is still produced experientially, rather than through argument, but the experience is more improvisational. It also puts the user at the centre, with each decision determined by the needs of the end-users, which are themselves discovered and revised through building, testing and learning.
- ARTEFACTS: Prototyping produces the building blocks for future development, not just solutions to the problem at hand. In this sense the objects created are able to be used repeatedly and are permanently unfinished. To facilitate this, prototypers document thoroughly and transparently in every step of the process so next iterations can learn, use and reuse each object.
- ACTORS: the number and variety of actors involved in producing knowledge is much larger. Multi- and inter-disciplinary exchange is promoted to provide new angles on problems, and the privilege of ‘expertise’ is replaced with preference for experience and empathy.
Above all it is a recursive method. It allows people to come together around a shared concern, then provides the tools and processes for those people to stay connected in pursuit of addressing that concern.
In the words of McKenzie Wark, “we produce new concepts, new perceptions, new sensations, hacked out of raw data. Whatever code we hack, be it programming language, poetic language, math or music, curves or colourings, we are the abstracters of new worlds. Whether we come to represent ourselves as researchers or authors, artists or biologists, chemists or musicians, philosophers or programmers, each of these subjectivities is but a fragment of a class still becoming, bit by bit, aware of itself as such.”
Applying Prototyping in your work
Embracing these principles in our work and bringing these ideas into the initial phases of a project has already made a huge difference in the results. Especially in cases where the problems to solve are clear, but there’s room to improve existing solutions. Quite often we want to make sure our projects build upon and advance current state-of-the-art tools and resources, serving as a base for future ones to come.
1. Define your users
Before embarking on any project, think about what you are actually trying to achieve, who are the key audiences that have the power to reach those achievements and what information, messages or support do they need to take necessary decisions or actions. Interview them, survey them, or draw on your previous experiences with them; what’s key is that you know who they are and how they are likely to interact with and act upon the tools or information created. This understanding provides the rationale for decisions about what to do and what not to do.
Remember that everyone is a user. All the actors involved in the making or use of a tool are considered users.
2. Invite all users to participate
The user is the backbone of the prototyping process and they should be allowed to contribute to the project regularly. This can be through direct discussion and intervention or in a more decentralized fashion. The interdisciplinary and horizontal efforts give birth to “prototypical” projects, where the context and collaboration process is as important as the objects produced. The tools built this way are (consciously) imperfect and unfinished.
3. Put your users at the centre and respond as they discover new possibilities
User-centered innovation is more than just including users in the prototyping process and making decisions based on what they might need. As you create things, you create new relations between previously unconnected points and increase the range of possibilities that a user can comprehend. Constantly testing and innovating (‘release early, release often’) allows you to get the best intelligence from your prospective users as they become more familiar with the world of opportunities in front of them.
4. Innovation is a mix of imitation and invention
Through a journey of imitation (applying best practices, learned lessons and principles) and invention (experimenting with new approaches and ideas) we create new possibilities and new relations. If you give people adequate space (time, location, freedom from ‘deliverables’), they can mix and remix ideas into prototypes and recommendations.
5. Document everything and share widely
This collaboration process works best when it’s thoroughly documented using tools like code repositories, and becomes recursive when those repositories and documents are open and act as building blocks for other projects to come. Sharing what you learn (both successes and failures) helps all of us learn, so we know what to avoid and what to repeat.
To sum up
We believe that building products on top of shared knowledge and open data, engaging scientists, policy makers and citizens in the process and documenting it transparently should be the new normal. By combining a focused vision, a deep understanding of how humans communicate and a disruptive use of technology, we can build technology that people use and love, so they can make our shared Planet better for everyone, one step at a time.
Originally published at blog.vizzuality.com.
