Prototyping

Prototyping

Prototyping is a special kind of convergence process that serves to make ideas real, test them in simulation or real-world situations, and prepare them for implementation. Early prototypes are rough and easy to make and modify. Successive prototypes add resolution or details as the design project moves forward with the later-stage prototypes being the most fully formed. Prototypes need to be accessible, more real than virtual, and built for people to interact with through experiences. In this article I will give definition to the prototyping process and go on to explore considerations for practice, describe the anatomy of a prototype, and explore a variety of approaches for prototyping. I will conclude by revisiting the design model and describing the use of what I call design schematics, a tool to step through the design process leading up to implementation of the preferred solution.

What is Prototyping?

Prototyping defined. Prototyping is a process for building models of potential solutions, refining them through repeated testing, and preparing them for eventual production or implementation. An internet search on the word prototype yields definitions like “a first, typical or preliminary model of something, especially a machine, from which other forms are developed or copied” or “a person or thing that serves as an example of a type” and “the ancestral or primitive form of a species or other group; an archetype” – oh, I like archetypes. All of which seem pretty much on target... although I’ll save you my lengthy discourse of archetypes.

A deeper search for definition yields a tremendous amount of material, perhaps too much for a generalized model. Prototyping gets a lot of detailed treatment in very specific applications like software development, engineering sciences, biology and the natural sciences, electronics, material and mechanical applications, consumer products, and simple tools and machines. There are form studies, user experiences, AGILE processes, visual and functional prototypes, and a lot of proof of concept approaches. To help make sense of all of this, I’ll return to a useful taxonomy that comes out of design thinking.

Revisiting Buchanan’s 4 orders. Allow me to again review one of the seminal writings on design thinking, Richard Buchanan’s 1992 article Wicked Problems in Design Thinking. Buchanan put three significant conceptual stakes in the ground. He postulated that design thinking was a new and emerging liberal art. He framed the design process as a way to solve some of the worlds most difficult and wicked problems. And, he explored how design thinking is applied across a large number of problems and how extensively design affects contemporary life. He summarized four orders for design thinking that will be extraordinarily helpful to aid our understanding of the prototyping process:

1st order: symbolic and visual communication. Examples here include graphic design works like typography, publications, illustration, photography, video, infographics, and computer graphics and animation. This order focuses on communicating ideas and information. Prototypes are often drawn or visualized electronically.

2nd order: materials and tangible objects. Examples here include everyday products, clothing, tools, machines, and anything we use in our 3D world. Design here can go between the virtual and physical and extends to include psychological, social, and cultural experiences related to the objects. Prototypes can be any of the 1st order but also include scale models, material objects, or computer representations.

3rd order: activities, services, and simple systems. Examples here include services, user experiences, human machine system interfaces, and simple organizational processes – anything where one or more individuals are experiencing interactive interaction with an intentional and pre-designed system. Prototypes can include 1st and 2nd order representations for components of the system, but experiences and interactions require more complicated storytelling or experience mapping.

4th order: complex systems to include cultures, environments, and organizations. Examples here include architecture and urban planning, complex engineered systems, and social systems and media. As Buchanan writes, this order is “more and more concerned with exploring the role of design in sustaining, developing, and integrating human beings into broader ecological and cultural environments.” These prototypes are more difficult to build and require multiple forms of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd order representations as well as scenarios and complex systems dynamics.

I really find the four orders of design thinking to help unpack the various approaches to prototyping and considerations for practice. One should treat a 1st order visual prototype very differently from a 4th order system. First and second order prototypes are first of all much easier to build, display, and create interactive experiences with. Developing prototypes for 3rd order activities, services, and simple systems can be difficult without a great deal of expense. And 4th order prototypes require either lots of storytelling and imagination or lengthy studies to fully uncover all of the components.

As I’ve mentioned before, a case could be made that prototyping could be traced along with the evolution of our species as we first grabbed a rock or hand tool and made improvements to adapt them to our tasks and environments. But there should be a point in time when we became more conscious about the process and formalized prototyping. The results of my research suggest that this formalization happened in the late 1960s or 1970s. There was an explosion of processes using the basic approach, from industrial applications to emerging software development, not only was the method used, but it was written about, adapted, and evolved from more art to more science. Since then, we have found applications in nearly every type of industry and most recently design thinkers have amplified prototyping to a dominant tool.