Prototyping: Engage in a dialogue with reality

In our world, speculation is bad. We see people accumulate mountains of information and data from studies and statistics but never venture to speculate on the larger ramifications of this information or connect it all into a theory.

On the other hand, we have all met that person who constantly speculates. All they do is talk about ideas they have, how they could make millions and how the world has it in for them.

The great inventor Buckminster Fuller was neither of these people. Fuller was constantly coming up with ideas for possible inventions, making him like… everyone else. What set him apart was that he noticed early on people have great ideas but were afraid to put them into physical form. To set him apart from the dreamers, fuller created a strategy for turning speculations into realities.

The Artifact Strategy

Working off his ideas, Buckminster would make sketches in a notebook. Here is the key, he would make these sketches as quickly as possible. As soon as an idea entered his head, he would capture it on paper. Next he would make crude models of his ideas, if they seemed feasible at all he would proceed to crafting working prototypes. By actually translating his ideas into tangible objects, he could gain a sense of whether they were potentially interesting or merely ridiculous.

If the prototypes passed his test, he would take them to the next level and make public “artifacts” of his ideas to see how people would respond. One artifact that he made was the Dymaxion car. Featuring three wheels and an unusual shape, it was meant to be much more efficient, maneuverable, and aerodynamic than any vehicle in existence.

However, in making the artifact public, he realized several faults in it’s design and reformulated it. Although the Dymaxion car never took off, to this day it continues to astound designers and engineers. Buckminster would eventually expand this artifact strategy to all of his ideas, including his most famous one – the Geodesic dome.

Modern Day Example

A great example of building and testing a crude artifact is the online social search engine Aardvark. Before its acquisition by google for $50 million, it was a social search service that connected users with friends or friends-of-friends who were able to answer their questions. Essentially, it humanized search by allowing you to query your extended social network.

Aardvark launched their beta test in 2008, with little to no funding. How did they do it? They literally had people sitting behind computers waiting for a question to come in, then they would perform the intended function of querying the persons social network manually. Archaic? Yes, but Aardvark grew by leaps and bounds, validated their product for the cost of a pizza party.

Put it to work

Have an idea for a product? Make a clay model and pretend you are actually using it. Or even better, make an ugly looking prototype that works like the real product would. Watch how your target market interacts with it.

Have an idea for a service? Map out what the service would look like, and then act out each part. If you can bring in the people you are designing for to interact with the product or service prototype it will inject even more reality into the process.

Engage in a dialogue with reality

Fuller’s process of making artifacts is a great model for making your ideas real. You can spend thousands of dollars in a lab by yourself perfecting an idea, only to find at launch there is a discrepancy between your level of excitement, and an indifferent public. Get feedback early, based on the assessments you gain, you can redo the work and launch it again. Cycle through this process several times and the responses will empower you to see how your idea affects the user at a deeper level. You will see the objective reality of your work and its flaws, as reflected through the eyes of many people.

Most want to talk about the facts, or merely speculate about solutions. Instead, you must follow the route of Buckminster Fuller and go the opposite direction. Create new facts. Turn your speculations into their physical forms, artifacts. They will allow you to confirm or disconfirm your theories, piercing reality into the process.