If you’ve not realised it by now, banging on about the value of prototyping is kind of my thing now.

It could be incoherently in my weeknotes, in around 14,000 words (so far) trying to get an academic project over the line, or a blog post for work.

Not every piece of work I’ve been involved in has revolved around prototyping (which makes me sad), but all of my strongest work memories tend to revolve around the act of building and learning from prototyping. Off the top of my head and almost certainly not in chronological order:

• Building the interface for a foetal heart monitor alongside midwives using paper jigsaw pieces, and then digital prototyping tools
• An Oesophageal doppler interface in Flash (Actionscript 3 if my memory is correct) with waveforms, noises and everything
• Mocking up a bank branch in our offices for a children’s savings account, including cuddly dragons with NFC chips sewn inside (they never made the cut)
• The flagship computer mouse re-design that we never were allowed to put on our website, but involved ordering and modifying the tiniest linear stepper motors and electromagnets we could find, coding the controls too. *Cough*
• Finally working out after multiple late nights why the arduino wasn’t talking to the smart plugs to control the pump for a pressure area care mattress for a sales demo (for an angry Scottish man)
• Cutting up my sports clothing and hand stitching them into new designs for ostomy bags
• Building PowerPoint prototypes with some of the most senior lawyers in Europe at the European Central Bank
• Wrapping my brain around Axure states so we could test a new depression treatment monitoring tool
• Crafting a scale model of a Co-op store to walk through different customer experiences
• Seeing colleagues stick cardboard boxes together to explore new ways of self serve tills working (with added human supplied ‘beeps’ and ‘boops’)

This is not a humblebrag post – I had intended it to be a slightly more thoughtful consideration of the value of prototyping with a few examples dropped in.

In truth, doing that trip down memory lane has reminded me of the joy, the creativity and the learning that prototyping has brought me as a designer over the years. It makes me sad that this may not be the same for so many others who are just starting out, or are finding themselves constrained by other people’s expectations.

Not every project will require miniature electromagnets and linear stepper motors (they never work properly anyway), but all products form part of an experience or a service. Zoom out from the detail and build service prototypes, mock up spaces and places. Don’t let people tell you that its too early to make things, you’re making them to learn, not because they’re the right answer.

Maybe one day I’ll write the long thoughtful post. Maybe, this is a more meaningful contribution anyway. Learn fast and make things.

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