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Thinking through prototypes: reflections on the prototyping mindset and experience
Prototyping is a technique used in design and engineering work. It involves building lightweight models of early stage designs for the purpose of testing and improving them. Anything that can be rendered tangible can be prototyped — visual concepts, user experience (UX) flows, software and service designs, organisations, business models, you name it.
Prototyping is a great way of gathering new insights and catalyzing reflection on work in progress. Creating a prototyped model of your work and inviting people to interact and play with it makes it easier for them to understand what you are trying to do and offer valuable feedback. By modelling ideas, we are able to submit them for specific feedback, enabling us to check our assumptions, consider different avenues and perspectives, and iterate on our work until it shines.
This post reflects on the kind of thinking that’s involved in making and engaging with prototypes. Prototyping involves a unique kind of thinking — thinking through things.
Thinking through things requires us to get out of our heads and draw on our senses. It requires us to extrapolate from sensual cues to grasp the idea behind the thing and understand its purpose. In engaging a prototype, we are ultimately required to think beyond the…
