Putting the Arts to Work for Us: Unpacking the Methodology and Using It

So, to summarize the ground we’ve covered so far:

(a) In order to think effectively in a given context, we need to think first about thinking itself: to be mindful of our default modes of thinking; to be proactive in gaining access to other ways of seeing and understanding. Mental catalysts such as metaphors and other artful devices can project us into new perspectives; secondly, the emotional leading edge of our thought-feelings can serve as our scout in identifying new horizons.

(b) Our orbital model of thinking and learning is well matched to these higher order challenges and can take us into a wide-angle search of the idea space surrounding our point of focus. This broad sweep of the neighborhood activates intuition as well as observation, our senses as well as our imaginations. Our choice of satellite ideas and catalysts to move us through this space should be rich in personal meaning and alive with potential connectivity.

(c) Given our findings, we can say with reasonable confidence that: The arts, in their richness of content and evocative power across our senses, memory and imagination, can serve as a rich source of satellite ideas and catalyst activities for our orbital explorations of complex subjects.

Now let’s get more specific about how to do this!

Step One: Getting Ready

Getting ready is a layered and inclusive affair, as essential for the design and facilitation team as it is for the participants themselves. In a very real sense, everyone will undertake this journey together. And so both must enter into the space of new thinking and imagination; both must jump into the process of thinking about thinking. Of course, the guides of the experience will need to be at least a couple of steps ahead of the participants, both in the moment and above the moment. But their experience of the journey must be as authentic as those they facilitate or the spell will be broken. A skilled facilitator will have mastered the art of dual awareness: immersion in the moment, vision above the moment, a trusted keeper of the group’s relationship with both present and future. And also, an observer and manager of the group’s energy: its individuals and the collective as a whole.

Establishing signposts to trigger exploratory leaps and dives above/below our more ordinary thinking can be as simple as drawing attention to a series of keywords such as our word “craft” mentioned earlier, rich in layered meaning. Craft: the vessel, container or form which floats our idea. Craft: the skilled shaping and making of our idea. Craft, as in craftiness: the tricker element of unseen action. Setting the mind in curious exploratory motion and then unpacking the experience together is precisely the impulse we wish to liberate in getting ready for our journey. And as we know, the arts are a treasure trove of such launching points cued to each of our senses. The spirit of the moment? Curious, playful, reflective.

Step Two: Identifying the Tools, Designing the Journey

This level of planning belongs to the designer/facilitators and is necessarily grounded in two kinds of knowledge: (a) knowledge of the participants, their organizational culture, history and vision for the future, and (b) knowledge of the arts and a methodology for utilizing the arts as a catalyst for new thinking and process facilitation. The first type of knowledge is research-based and customary in working effectively with every variety of participant group. The second type of knowledge has only more recently been brought to bear on issues of strategy crafting, leadership development and higher order thinking. Working in collaboration with seasoned artists or more optimally with those called “teaching artists” is something to be recommended as their expertise will certainly include the arts but also extend beyond the arts per se to the application of the arts in the service of thinking and learning in other domains. Yet another recommended approach to launching the design process is to play on the artfulness of the participants themselves and guide and facilitate their own expression from a variety of perspectives or activities.

In selecting artful catalysts and satellite ideas for the exploration of a special point of focus, it is important to cast one’s net both near and far: to reach for the periphery and far horizons of shared knowledge and awareness, and to swim intermittently in the shallows and utterly familiar. The former are the domains of imagination and invention, the latter – just as important – keep us grounded even as we are challenged to see the familiar with new eyes. Ultimately, it is the flexing of perspective from near to far and back again, from the familiar to the unknown and back again, which builds our capacity for agile, adaptable and adventurous thinking. This is precisely the skill set most valuable for participants to take home with them: not some golden nugget encapsulating the idea of the month, but a habit of mind that has become a part of them.

Step Three: Activating the Orbital Experience

Here once again, the spirit of the enterprise must be curious, playful, reflective. Only this time, the dive will be deeper and the leap will take us farther from home. Participants should be ready and eager at this point to jump in and be fully immersed. After all, thus far, it’s been safe, fun and curiously inviting. Some may even have developed an intuition for where things are headed. However, no one will have a strict read on the future. What comes next will by definition, be learning by surprise. This means that their emotional self will be in the game now too. Emotion, imagination, memory and senses together will be evoked and called into to play. “Ah ha” moments await them, simmering in the sensory interplay of sounds and stories, touches remembered and imagined, visions and images just out of reach, just coming into focus, words pronounced or unspoken, poems, whispers, songs and symphonies, catalysts all!

The role of the facilitator here is both critical and subtle. Manage the process too closely and the magic closes down as participants lose those crucial degrees of freedom so loved in our own moments of discovery. Fail to manage the process or manage it too loosely and the magic evaporates into thin air as participants lose their grounding and their ideas fail to find their containers. The skilful facilitator, again both in the moment and above the moment, will guide the process lightly but surely, assuring journeys both inward and outward, thoughtful and full of feeling, introspective and in dialogue with others, and most importantly, allowing the unknown and the ‘not yet’ to have their moments of hidden action, the “trickster” element that runs ten paces ahead of clarity and illumination. Much depends on the skill of the facilitator in partnership his or her artist collaborators. In special instances, artists and facilitators will be one and the same. In sum, the process requires constant engagement and vigilance while applying a consistent soft touch.

Step Four: Reflecting, Discussing, Debriefing Together

When participants have spent an hour or more wholeheartedly immersed in a new experience, they are often near to bursting with a desire to tell someone about it, especially someone who’s just completed his or her own version of the experience. This is a threshold moment for the facilitator and participants alike. Generative and interpretive processes are both in “on mode” at this point. The internal mix of fresh experience and perception is still registering, still flooding conscious awareness while early interpretive reflexes are already active. This is a tricky moment and not necessarily the best moment for participants to be chatting with one another. Why? Because that would be cutting short the crucially more important conversation barely begun with oneself. The skilled facilitator will be aware of this and create a space for this inner conversation to deepen and run its course. This time of quiet reflection or quiet writing is invaluable to a person’s knowing her own experience: the thoughts, feelings, inspirations and memories which belong to her alone.

The next step of gathering in conversation circles can then bear its own fruit without pre-empting the individual’s internal discussion. Indeed, each person is now far better prepared to engage with others, to listen, to take in other perspectives and to share one’s own unique contribution. Step by step, the group process can be guided to move its focus to learning mode, to the multiple perspectives on the subject at hand, to emerging lines of deeper inquiry and to potential reframing of the original problem. From conversation circles onward to group reports back to plenary and open discussion, the diversity of reflections will gradually over time find their commonalities, their nuanced contrasts and next set of burning questions. A process of guided reflections will help the group to generate not only the outcomes they set out to produce from the beginning but also to capture important surprises, learnings, and insights gleaned from their orbital journeys.

Step Five: Opportunity for Extension Learning

This is one point in the process that is especially ripe for serving up one or more tasty entrees from content specialists. Some of these offerings will have been lined up well in advance per the carefully crafted plan of the design team. Others will have arisen more spontaneously and just as spontaneously facilitated by content specialists from within the group. Topics selected by the design team might well be governed by the same rule as their selection of artful catalysts and satellite ideas, namely “casting one’s net both near and far”. This would mean offering: (a) deep dives into content areas immediately close to the point of focus, and (b) expeditionary dives into content areas approaching the far periphery. The value of the former is practical and immediate, the value of the latter is a second invitation to imagination and invention. Stan Gryskiewicz, founder of the Association for Managers of Innovation, refers to this reach to the periphery as “positive turbulence”, a fundamental strategy for embedding both resilience and innovation into one’s organizational or personal culture.

Opportunities for extension learning, ‘both near and far’, can be positioned at any of several junctures in the strategy crafting process. In some instances, it can be part of early preparation or pre-work. In others, it may cycle intermittently through a multi-phase process. In the scenario of the paragraph above, it follows on the heels of debriefing an art-based orbital journey. It’s worth noting that the deep dives of extension learning, whether ‘near or far’, generally call upon a modality of thinking which stands in contrast to the arts-based mental processes of our orbital journeys. This contrast in modalities is something to be exploited. For it turns out that alternating our modalities of mental processing keeps us alert and energized in the short term and enhances our mental flexibility in the long term. Expert designers and facilitators can bake in opportunities for extension learning and positive turbulence, but perhaps even more importantly, they can recognize unexpected opportunities to allow them to emerge while in the process of facilitating.

Step Six: Synthesis, Discernment and Recycling

In the process of strategy crafting is important periodically to take stock of where the process to date has taken everyone, in other words, to think and reflect together on what has been accomplished, what has yet to be accomplished, what is clear, what is still unclear, where there is consensus and where there is not. The process is iterative and provisional, but intentionally progressive, and ultimately, it will have an endpoint. Along the way, however, successful designers and facilitators will be prepared to re-enter the catalyst stage and orbital processes as often as needed to refresh, sharpen or shift participant perspectives. This process might be conceived as a regimen for maintaining peak performance readiness. It may also serve to boost morale and keep the group mind agile and energized. The group will gain awareness along the way of when the process has achieved enough results and when it has not – and if they don’t, the facilitator can help guide them to discover this.

In the final stage of the strategy crafting process, as the living document is created and readied for formal adoption, it will be crucial that its form or container be equal to the task of holding its ideas securely and accurately (the craft must float), that it be drafted in language and images equal to the task of expressing its ideas with compelling elegance and power (the crafting must be masterful), and lastly, that it be presented and shared in a manner equal to the task of capturing constituents’ imaginations, winning their hearts and minds, and acquiring their ownership (the curious, ‘crafty’, magical nature of unseen action).

Check back next week for various applications of the arts in strategy crafting: practical catalysts large and small.

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Robert Brodnick, Ph.D. Vice President for Strategy & Innovation www.strategicinitiatives.com robert@strategicinitiatives.com 530.798.4082 John Cimino President http://creativeleaps.org/ jcimino@creativeleaps.org

An Orbital Model of Thinking and Learning

Buckminster Fuller once described something he called “precessional learning” as learning that occurs slowly over time as our accumulated insights interact with one another (typically well beneath the level of our awareness) and find their right relationships, adjusting their orbits, as it were, around our central focus. Celebrated scholar, Mary Catherine Bateson (1995) has written wonderfully about what she calls “peripheral learning”, the sort of learning that happens when you think you’re learning something else or not even learning at all. In both cases, the learner is moving through the broad idea space surrounding the focus of his or her attentions. In both cases too, the learning surfaces unpredictably from unconscious rather than conscious process.

John’s (Cimino) version of this non-linear, indirect approach to learning is called “orbital learning” and is illustrated in the figure below. It is purposefully indirect, preferring to explore the surrounding neighborhood of ideas in order to get a feel for what might lie at the center. It seeks context, field forces, the topography of the terrain, the perspectives of other disciplines, the culture of local highways and byways – all the time cultivating a measure of intuition for that special focal point, not unlike the meanderings of a shy boy in orbit around his ‘Juliet’. Here, however, although there is plenty happening beneath the level of one’s awareness, there is a conscious strategy of enrichment of the learning field. The orbiting is deliberate and research oriented, mindfully seeking a multiplicity of perspectives on the subject of one’s fascinations.

As you will see, this orbital model of our learning process happens to be compatible with an arts-based approach to thinking and imaginative development. To better understand this, however, let’s position the arts themselves as the focal point of our orbital investigations and see what we can learn about their inner workings via this model.

In Orbit around the Arts

To begin, we need a set of enticing satellite concepts to launch into orbit around our arts focal point and serve as our catalysts. Their job will be to tease out insights and clues as they circulate through the idea space surrounding “the arts”. Here we present four concept words for this, each representing a dimension or direction of growth in our human conscious development. Their interplay will hopefully spark a few insights.

• Fantasia, the Italian word for imagination (pronounced, in the Italian, fan-ta-SEE-a) borrowed famously by animator Walt Disney. Arguably, fantasia – and not formal logic – may be our most direct and potent way of knowing. Fantasia: an authentic species of knowing equivalent to the uniquely intimate knowing of an inventor or creator – personally experienced, personally grasped, personally felt. Fantasia = imaginative insight.

• Coeur, the French for “heart”, from which we also derive our word for “courage”. So many noble and endearing qualities attach to this blood pumping organ: compassion, wisdom, fortitude, gentleness, intuition, the ineffable, love, passion, hope. Pascal’s classic, “The heart has reasons, which reason does not comprehend.” The heart is our portal to another species of knowing, to mystery, imagination, and yes, courage.

• Apericolia, a Greek word referring to “a lack of experience of things beautiful”. The scholar Joseph Campbell once said, “Far too many of our youth, our leaders and our communities suffer from apericolia. Beauty isn’t cool, commercial or controversial anymore, or so some would have us believe.” But the arts favor beauty! Whether captured in an equation, the sweep of a symphony or the leaping of a gazelle, the arts favor what happens in the presence of beauty: joy, rapture, hope, a deeper and different knowing of ourselves and our connection with the world.

• Consilience, a rare word until recently, recovered for us by biologist Edward O. Wilson in his book, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. Consilience – literally, a “jumping together” of knowledge across disciplines – is all about “connectivity” and the weaving together of ideas from different domains of knowledge to reveal deeper, common groundworks of explanation. Our minds delight in consilience. Our “atoms of consilience” are our metaphors. “My love is a red, red rose.” Writ large, consilience is knowledge fit together in a broad connected landscape.

Gleanings and Insights from our Orbital Journey

Hitching a ride on these satellite ideas as they encircle our focal point of the arts has yielded for many of us curious travellers gleanings and insights which include the following:

• The arts bring us into direct contact with imagination, our own as well as others.
• The arts jump-start a process of reflection through which we begin to ‘see’ what lies beneath the surface of things.

• The arts open us to alternative perceptions both of ourselves and the world around us.
• The arts challenge us to see more, to envision the “not yet” and then to work to bring it into being.
• The arts connect us deeply and meaningfully to our senses as channels of perception to the outer world and as modalities of expression for our inner world.
• The arts help us to feel deeply, to feel differently and to connect with one another empathically.
• The arts tap the wisdom of the ages across cultures, centuries and codes of conscience.
• The arts bring us face to face, eye to eye with beauty and the silent experience of awe. (The aesthetic encounter becomes one of self-recognition, an aspect and a glimmer of ourselves recognized in the beauty which has overwhelmed us. This may bring us to tears, but this is not sadness, rather joy and a more compassionate knowing of ourselves and all we love.)
• The arts are imagination (fantasia), connection (consilience), beauty (apericolea), wholeheartedness (coeur).

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Robert Brodnick, Ph.D. Vice President for Strategy & Innovation www.strategicinitiatives.com robert@strategicinitiatives.com 530.798.4082 John Cimino President http://creativeleaps.org/ jcimino@creativeleaps.org

The Role of the Arts in Strategy Crafting

The Role of the Arts in Strategy Crafting

This month, I invite scholar, practitioner, and performer John Cimino to the blog to explore the role of the arts in facilitation, dynamics, and crafting strategy. John president and CEO of Creative Leaps International, The Learning Arts, Icarus Musicworks and Associated Solo Artists. Educated at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (biology & physics), the State University of New York at Albany (learning theory), and the Manhattan and Juilliard Schools of Music (music & voice), Cimino holds a uniquely interdisciplinary perspective and works across multiple disciplines dedicated to learning and human development. He serves as a consultant and advisor to universities engaged in interdisciplinary reorganization with a primary focus on creativity, leadership, and arts-mediated approaches to pedagogy. Now, on to crafting...

Whether we are crafting strategy, crafting a poem or crafting a roll-top desk in our garage workshop, we are fashioning by hand something that was once mere idea and giving it form, purposeful form, so it can carry power and take its place in the world. Our crafting of the work is a curious blend of virtues and skills: two parts sheer dedication and persistence, two parts dexterity and skilled artistry, and one part pure imagination. Each of these ingredients is crucial to the end result and we will concern ourselves with each of them in this and the blog posts that will follow.

But first let’s delve a little deeper into the meaning of our first key word, “craft”. A “craft” is also a vessel, a container which holds cargo, a form which floats. The verb “to craft” refers to the dedicated artful making we have just mentioned. A third meaning derives from a related form, namely “crafty” suggesting a certain trickster quality, an element of magic or unseen action. As an exercise in layered thinking, let’s keep each of these aspects of “craft” in mind as we continue our explorations: craft (the vessel), craft (the making), and craftiness (the trickster nature of unseen action).

The Arts as a Catalyst for New Thinking

So, what do we mean by the arts?

Here’s the view of a young student, translator and freelance journalist, Marilina Maraviglia: “Art is generally understood as any activity or product done by people with a communicative or aesthetic purpose – something that expresses an idea, an emotion or, more generally, a world view. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations and ways of expression, including music, literature, film, sculpture and paintings. It is a form of human expression whose definition is ultimately open, subjective, and debatable, and perhaps best described as an evolving and global concept, open to new interpretation, too fluid to be pinned down.” This loose, encompassing approach to defining art is just right for our purposes. But for good measure, here are a few quotes from artists and scholars that enrich the framing still further.

“Art and artists stimulate us to see more, hear more and experience more of what

is going on within us and around us.” Edgar Schein

“I paint things as I think of them, not as I see them.” Pablo Picasso

“Art does not reproduce what is visible, it makes things visible.” Paul Klee

In the search for solutions, we must think about thinking.

Our thinking about anything is often a multi-layered affair. Do we know enough about our subject to draw conclusions? How many other ways of looking at this are there that I’m not seeing? Should I trust my perceptions, my point of view, my particular knowledge and instincts in this area? How can I get out of my own way and see things differently? Consider these nuggets from three well-known thinkers.

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking

we were at when we created them." Albert Einstein

"Everything we see hides another thing. We always want to see what is hidden
by what we see. " René Magritte

"The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden

by the answers." James Baldwin

Sharpening and shifting our perceptions to access other perspectives and layers of meaning often takes a catalyst to get things moving. We all know catalysts to be accelerators of chemical reactions which are not themselves consumed in the process. In the world of mental and group processes, a catalyst can be as simple as a metaphor which takes us quickly into new territory. “My love is a red, red rose” said Robert Burns and ‘voila’, a whole constellation of attributes – beautiful, vibrant, passionate – come to our aid as we think on our lady love. Just as quickly we might add she is like a sunrise or a gazelle and our perspective shifts again, this time to warmth and light, gracefulness and speed. In the blink of an eye, we are there, swiftly and quietly beneath the radar of our customary logic.

The arts are in the business of shifting our perspectives, helping us to see things differently, asking provocative questions, making the unseen visible. They not only help us to think differently, they help us to feel – more deeply, more authentically and differently too. Sadly, much of our on-the-job thinking is a deliberate effort to separate us from our feelings, as though emotions carry no value but distraction. Whereas neuroscientists today (Damazio) assure us that there are no thoughts without feelings, no feelings without thoughts, that the traffic of our conscious minds is a glorious blend of thought-feelings and feeling-thoughts. Indeed, it is the emotional leading edge of our thought-feelings which sets the trajectory of our explorations and ultimately locks our discoveries into long-term memory.

We need the feeling aspect of our mental processes as much as our so-called thoughts. We need the arts as much as the sciences, the aesthetic as much as any other aspect of our conscious experience. As our great American philosopher, Maxine Greene, was fond of reminding us, “the opposite of aesthetic is anesthetic, aesthetic means ‘to feel’, to be without the arts is to be deprived of feeling, to become numb, and that’s where evil finds its way in, when there is no feeling.” Powerful words.

More to come...

Over the coming weeks John Cimino and Rob Brodnick, your authors, will continue our collaboration and explore the role of the arts in strategy crafting, considering how the arts can serve as a fundamental catalyst for new thinking, eventually leading to strategy. Our next blog post will expand on the key concept of orbital thinking. The following post will unpack a simple methodology for integrating the arts into the strategy crafting process. The final piece will give very specific applications we have used in the last dozen or so years that yield powerful results. 

Stay tuned for more on the subject, you won’t be disappointed.

Using the Prototyping Approach to Designing Generative Processes

Generative processes are critical to future oriented or strategic thinking efforts. It is from these processes that opportunities, ideas, and choices are identified and more fully articulated. Often, some of the best new approaches to strategies are generated in ideation, applying the prototyping approach to develop the best and more appropriate generative processes for the overall effort can be quite useful. I will describe ways I have done so.

Designing a strategic planning process through prototyping. I created a tool to prototype strategic crafting. Recently, I used the tool to help a large executive team develop a comprehensive strategic planning process. The group was set to launch a year-long strategic planning effort during a multi-day retreat and did not have a long history of integrated strategic planning. Most of the individual units had deep strategies and were showing success in execution, but this new effort was going to be different. It required strategies to be crafted that integrated activities and outcomes across the units. A key part of the crafting process was going to be generative, identifying and articulating a long list of potential opportunities from broad constituencies, testing them, and selecting the best ones for future strategy.

We worked with a card deck composed of 30+ strategic planning tools and processes and conducted the prototyping sessions live at a leadership retreat. The goal of the prototyping was to design the strategic planning process. Each card included the name of the tool and a short but illustrative description of what the tool was and what was hoped to result from using the tool. There were blank cards for adding tools not in the original deck. There were also three different colors of cards: white cards with core tools that were required in any prototype, yellow cards that were optional to be included or discarded, and green cards with more advanced or innovative tools that awarded bonus points for use.

The cards were about three by five inches printed on heavy cardstock. Here are some samples:

   

Prior to the retreat, I worked with a local design team of executives that also would be participants. The goal of this pre-work was to test the language and tools to ensure they would make sense and include local necessary requirements for the planning process. At the retreat, after a day and a half of exploring challenges, opportunities, and models of planning processes used in other places, I conducted the 3 hour prototyping workshop. There were six teams composed of six or seven individuals each and we started building prototypes out of six tool decks. The cards were randomly spread across each table. They also had large-format sheets of paper, markers, and tape. The teams were asked to review the card deck and select the planning tools they believe would be the best moving forward. They also were asked to develop a planning timeline then arrange the tool cards in chronological order across the timeline. The teams had 60 minutes to build the prototype and develop a graphical representation that goes along with a 5-7 minute verbal presentation. It was shared that it was a competition and the group with the best prototype would win.

The groups started in a concentrated effort to inventory and understand the tools. Within 15 minutes, nearly everyone in the room was standing, moving the cards around, cutting and pasting sheets of paper, and being generally boisterous – good results. By about 45 minutes of process, six distinct prototypes began to emerge, some of them quite novel. I found that almost every group created a new planning tool, some more than one. After 60 minutes, I was able to quiet the room and begin the presentations. The team had fun and produced creative results.

During the processing of the results, we further refined the prototyping by selecting the one that appeared to most meet the needs of the entire group. It was a simple vote by the entire group. We then moved on to discuss what characteristics from the non-winning prototypes should be included in the next iteration. A new prototype began to emerge. We had significant buy in, if not complete consensus. The whole process moved forward and more refinements were made in subsequent sessions, but I felt at the time that we had made tremendous progress in a short time, perhaps doing in three hours what might had taken weeks or months without using a prototyping process.

Collaborative facilitation mapping. Much of my work involves developing small to large group interactive sessions for clients, typically CEOs or senior leaders. I often work with client side teams and collaborate with one or more facilitators. I also use a variety of generative processes in most of my projects. Unless they have worked with me in the past, when building proposals, I tend to have a difficult time explaining to the clients what these processes are, why they take up some much time, and why I recommend that so many people get involved. One approach that I am using more and more to design and deliver generative processes is online collaborative facilitation mapping with full prototyping flare.

There are a number of emerging online tools that allow teams to collaborate real time, either across distances or asynchronously at varying times and places. I like to build initial process prototypes, get everyone connected to be able to view and manipulate the model, and turn loose the power of prototyping to let the ideas evolve. I typically include data about the events, like dates, locations, and length of time. For each of the generative processes, I also write and vet outcome and output statements. Outcomes are those things we like to have resulted from the process such as new ideas, an increased sense of engagement, or enhanced teamwork. Outputs are those things that are tangibly created during the process such as lists, pictures, models, or other artifacts. The final component of the facilitation maps are the minute by minute details of the activities, which include timelines, speaking roles, process plans, and required materials.

We then iterate these maps, adjusting activities and outcomes along the way. Typically, the process starts with a small group and expands over time to all of those involved in planning and delivering the generative processes. This prototyping approach generates buy in, creates alignment in expected outcomes and outputs, and help to keep the event or process on track when it is happening live. Speaking roles are clarified and participant engagement is maximized.

In summary, you might find a lot of what I’ve written here a bit down in the weeds, but I wanted to give detail to how the prototyping approach can be applied not only to visual and physical object, but also to activities and processes. So give these methods a try, create one of your own, and explore the power of prototyping for process generation.

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Robert Brodnick, Ph.D. Vice President for Strategy & Innovation www.strategicinitiatives.com robert@strategicinitiatives.com 530.798.4082

What is Prototyping?

What is Prototyping?

Prototyping is a process for building models of potential solutions, refining them through repeated testing, and preparing them for eventual production or implementation. Prototyping as a process has probably always existed since humans began building tools to improve how they performed tasks. In essence, it’s a process of continually improving and adapting a tool or application to its environment. Prototyping coevolved with the scientific and industrial revolutions. It wasn’t until the 1960s and 70s, however, that we started to see prototyping more clearly described and defined as a specific process with steps, stages, and methods. It was also critically embedded in design and design thinking models.

Prototyping is embedded in design thinking. Now, prototyping as a fundamental part of the design thinking process, has spread to a wide variety of applications. The design process I prefer to use follows the six steps and stages in the graphic below. I will take more time in a later article to explain the design thinking process, but for now here are the six steps in brief.

Design: During the design phase, it is most important to spend time identifying the problem, understanding who are the clients and stakeholders, and scoping out the project. I like to use a design brief to summarize and communicate the work here and eventually establish criteria for success.

Futuring: The futuring process is one of background research, environmental scanning, and any SWOT (or similar) analysis. It is important to identify the forces at play in the current environment and at some point in the (not too) distant future and articulate the implications for your organization, the larger context, and the various stakeholders.

Divergence: Divergence is about creating choices. It is also about building on ideas over multiple sessions or iterations. The result is early concepts of potential solutions that can be further refined over time.

Convergence: The convergence process is one of narrowing down choices to those ideas best suited to action and results. Often, it is helpful to develop and refine key planning assumptions and test ideas to discover what “wows” so that tougher, later choices become easier.

Prototyping: Prototyping is a process for building models of potential solutions, refining them through repeated testing, and preparing them for eventual production or implementation. I often follow six steps in the process.

1. visualize possible solutions from the best choices

2. use stories bring ideas to life

3. determine what elements or functions the prototypes will test

4. build models, develop experiments, and get feedback from stakeholders

5. refine the prototypes

6. determine what works and plan to launch

Implementation: Here in the last stage of the design framework, we plan to make the ideas real. Decisions are required about the timeline, budget, impacts, and feedback mechanisms.

The four orders of prototyping. In one of the seminal writings on design thinking the 1992 article Wicked Problems in Design Thinking, Richard Buchanan put three significant conceptual stakes in the ground. First, he postulated the design thinking was a new and emerging liberal art. Second, he framed the design process as a way to solve some of the world's most difficult and wicked problems. Third, he explored how design thinking is applied across a large number of problems and how extensively design effects contemporary life. He summarized four orders for design thinking and therefore four possible realms for prototyping.

1st order: 
symbolic and visual communication. Examples here include graphic design works like typography, publications, illustration, photography, video, and computer graphics and animation. This order focuses on communicating ideas and information.

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.

3rd order: 
activities, services, and simple systems. Examples here include services, user experiences, human machine system interfaces, simple organizational processes – anything where one or more individuals are experiencing interactive interaction with an intentional and pre-designed system.

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.”

Most of the focus of my design and prototyping work deals with the 3rd and 4th order problems. In next week’s post, I will give you a concrete example of a fun technique I use to help strategy teams generate their own processes for generation and ideation.