Prototyping and Design Thinking

It's said that the famous inventor Nikola Tesla, who died in 1943 after contributing to many major projects in electricity and early advances in telecommunications, had the ability to sit at his desk and imagine all of the parts of his inventions.  Only once he was clear how all the parts worked would he bother to make a drawing and build a prototype.  Several of his former business and laboratory partners attested to his almost-magical ability to build a prototype from scratch, and yet have the machine work the very first time it was turned on.

The rest of us? We need to work at it.

Prototyping goes by many names in many different fields:

• In writing, it's a rough draft
• In fashion, it's called a sloper or a muslin
• In computer programming, it's called pseudocode
• In art, it's called a sketch or a doodle.
• In architecture, it's called a plan and elevation or a scale model
• In science, it's called a hypothesis
• In music, it's called jamming.
• In dance, it's called freeform movement
• In carpentry, it's called a scale model or a draft plan
• In sports, it's called a playbook
• In mechanics and electronics design, it's called a Lo-res prototype;
• In physics and mathematics, it's called a thought experiment.

The idea behind all of these, though, is that we rarely go from an idea in the mind to a finished product.  There are intermediate stages, and nearly all of those intermediate stages begin with what the writer Ann Lamott famously called a "sh$%#y first draft" in her book on writing, Bird by Bird.

Which is where Design Thinking comes into the educational process, and why prototyping — in any medium — is such an important part of Design Thinking.  Without a model that helps show the difference between what your internal vision is, and the reality you're trying to achieve, it's hard to show other people your plan or get them excited in your project.  You have to make something real, something tangible, something solid. Otherwise it's all just a vision, a mental dream.

This is why, in the Design Thinking Lab at IDS, we make a wider range of tools available to students than they commonly carry in their pencil bags: saws and drills, utility knives, heat guns, glue guns, cutting mats, carving tools, geometers' compasses.  It's why students get access to a wide range of materials: wood, plastic, metal, mesh, fabric, wire, string, rubber bands, paper, foamcore and more.

Access to tools and materials allow students a greater range of creative understanding.  It gives them the opportunity to cultivate their awareness of how different materials work, and what kind of processes and tools affect those materials.  It gives them a greater capacity to make and create in the future... and it teaches them to start working on projects earlier than they would otherwise, because they learn how difficult it is to make something real and beautiful.

In the IDS Design Process, Prototyping is represented by the geometric shape, the orange heptagon.  The seven-sided regular figure is nearly impossible to achieve

Prototype of Super-Cyborg Gadget Glove

with a straight edge and compass; and creating a vibrant orange color from only yellow and red paint is equally difficult.  Both the color and the shape serve a reminder that making real-world objects and processes has unique challenges — challenges that are only solved through practice, trial and error, and persistence.