Experimental prototyping

• 2-8 people
• 7,5 hours
• Practitioners
• Build prototypes

Both workshops run for a day and have almost the same name. They answer different questions.

Rapid prototyping establishes whether an idea works for the people meant to use it. It is about handling, clarity and usefulness. The prototype can be experienced, but it does not really function.

Experimental prototyping establishes whether something can be built at all. It is about feasibility. The draft executes the basic functions, and looks unfinished while doing so.

The choice depends on what is unclear in your case. If you do not know whether people will cope with it, take rapid prototyping. If you do not know whether it works technically, take this workshop.

The sequence follows what you bring with you. It starts with the assumption to be tested, and with the question of how you would recognise its failure. We then reduce to the smallest version that tests that one assumption. That gets built and tried out. At the end we record what the result means for further development.

A working draft with the basic functions, and a reliable finding about what holds and what does not. The result may well be that the chosen route does not work. This day is then the cheapest one on which you could have found out.

A readiness to learn, and an eye for observation. An experiment only helps someone who sees what actually happens, not what was supposed to happen. You need no technical background.

Projects where it is already settled what the result must look like. An experiment whose outcome is not open is not an experiment.

And projects without a concrete open question. If nobody can name what is to be tested, the day becomes a demonstration rather than a test.