Start by recognizing the work you’ve already done. If you’re moving on to the Specification phase, then you’ve already discovered more than what you could first see about a problem.
In this phrase, you are in convergence: you begin to narrow your choices and to give one of those options some material, spatial and temporal dimensions. In this phase, you’ll be making prototypes of your design.
These could range from a five minute pipe cleaner and glue rendering of your proposal to a full scale cardboard replica of a thing you want to build, to a weekend-long interactive version of it.
What’s important is that you create enough of your idea that others can interact with it and give you feedback on it, ideally without you having to explain it much.
Introduction
CHeck out the Specification phase in our case studies!
Social Emergency Response Center (SERC)
Public Kitchen
Let’s Flip It
Lighting the Bridge
An invitation to prototype
Why do we prototype?
Barrington Edwards on prototyping
To prototype means to test or model a new idea with the intention to make improvements. (We also use prototype as a noun, to point to the actual test or model that we’re using to try out an idea.) Prototyping is an important part of design, as it gives us the mindset to be open, allow things to fail (or succeed in directions we hadn’t imagined), and act to make adjustments accordingly. Too often folks who are trying to create change (at least from within the nonprofit sector) are not given this chance; we plan a large scale event or intervention, plan a new program or begin working with a new audience, all without getting to test our ideas and make improvements.
Slider Tool
The Slider Tool helps you to see possible variations and changes to your intervention, before committing to them.
The slider tool is useful in both the Specification and Iteration phases of designing an intervention. It borrows from digital photo editing programs where sliders are used to let you see changes before committing to them. A slider for saturation lets you see how an image would appear with heightened color or with almost no color, for instance.
What details can we prototype for?
A prototype can range from physical and graphic mock-ups of a product, to play-testing a game, to practicing an intervention and seeing how your intended audience engages with it.
We prototype to find out early on what might be inconsistent or getting in the way of a particular design’s capacity for success. It’s as much an inquiry into its style, aesthetics and communication system as it is into its ease of engagement or desired message.
Good prototyping will help us solve some of the “clunkiness” of our interventions and get us to a simple, clear and elegant design.
Some of the things we prototype for include:
Materials and functionality
Style/Communication
User Experience
Gesture/Invitation
Location/Scale/Timing
Read more about prototyping in the ‘Prototyping Social Interventions‘ section of Ideas-Arrangements-Effects book (p. 146-155).
What might your prototype help you learn?
Questions you can answer through prototyping:
Does the key element make sense?
Does the invitation work?
Do the materials work? how about the scale?
How do people respond to it? (Especially your desired audience)
Are you in the right location and/or time of day?
What roles are people good at/comfortable with?
Rapid prototype ideas
Ideas for finding quick ways to test your prototype:
Find a way to prototype an object you would use at your action or to test your gesture/intervention at a small scale.
Use your prototype to get feedback on your idea from another group.
Do a quick redesign based on feedback.
Feeling stuck in the creative process? Need some inspiration?
When do I start iterating?
Move onto the next phase, Iteration, when you:
Feel there’s nothing left to test “in the lab” and you know you need to see how your creation operates in public.
If that sounds like where you’re at, then:
Connecting Design with I-A-E
How do we know where to start designing for social change? We created a framework to help you read social situations through the lens of ideas, arrangements, and effects (I-A-E).
When we intervene at the scale of arrangements, we can create a more transformative change than if we just intervene in effects. By using design to intervene in existing arrangements and imagine new ones, we can produce new effects—ones that make a society more just and vibrant.