“If a picture is worth 1,000 words, a prototype is worth 1,000 meetings.’”
Let me make this clear from the outset - I’m not talking about the same sort of experimentation you may have done as a teenager. But experimentation in the sense I’m talking about might see you building stuff with Lego or getting the craft materials out….
There is no better way to solve a problem or sift through an idea than by building it or trying something out. As the design function within Bromford, we know the value of experimentation - it’s what helps good ideas to flourish and easily separates the nuggets of inspiration with the truly awful before it spirals out of control into a project (which I’m sure people have seen countless times before).
When someone says experiment, your mind probably immediately goes back to science lessons at school. Bunsen burners, safety goggles, an aim, method and conclusion. Experimentation in the sense we are talking about isn’t far off - you still need to have a clear aim, method and conclusion but safety apparatus and a naked flame are no longer required. Prototyping at its most basic could be nothing more than a drawing on a piece of paper - it’s just a way of articulating an idea you’re working on to make it tangible as once it becomes real, you can start look at:
How desirable is your idea? Is it what people need and value?
How feasible is your idea? Can it be delivered and does it answer your initial question?
How viable is your idea? Does it make business sense in terms of your strategy?
Here in the Lab, being able to answer these key design thinking questions quickly means we can accelerate the concepts that already tick all these boxes, iterate the ones that need a bit of work and bin off the ones that really don’t. You don’t need an expensive project or pilot to answer these questions - sometimes, it just needs a bit of paper, some Play-Doh or a quick wireframe!
Seeing as we’ve been off the air for a couple of months, we thought that this would be an excellent topic for our first #blabchat of 2019. Since I’m nice, here is a sneak peek of the questions:
We’re all really excited to kick these conversations off again and we can’t wait to see you all on Thursday 7th February from 8pm. As always, don’t forget to give us a follow, @BromfordLab and if you want to join in the conversation, all you need to do is include #blabchat!
See you Thursday!
UPDATE:
After our December blabchat we received some questions about our editorial policy - specifically about how we use tweets and what we include on our website. It was a useful reminder that we didn’t have a published policy - so here it is. All feedback welcome.