The Prototype and the Design Ethnographer

I could write a book about all that I learned during the conference!

However I will force myself to narrow it down to my 3 main takeaways :

"Prototypes can help you find the thing you weren't looking at"

As ethnographers we are trained to observe and look at everything from every angle - but there is always something you can't or don't see.

Prototyping is another tool or approach which can help you look at a problem or research area from a new perspective.

"Prototypes can bridge boundaries"

One of the biggest issues facing design ethnographers is how to bridge the gap between research and design.

As an ethnographer the last thing you want is your insights and research to just sit on a shelf - you want it to be used in the creation of something tangible - having prototyping as part of the design ethnographer's toolkit is one way to do this?

"Prototypes can open up the research and the design space"

I had previously thought of prototypes as a way of beginning to close down the exploratory phase of a project - moving on to the concept phase. As a result of the conference I have seen that they can be a great tool for opening up the space and can be used at the very front end of the project as a conversation starter and method of engaging with your participants.

Starstruck

We also got to the chance to speak with experts in their field such as Liz Sanders, Colin Burns and Michael Schrage who were extremely friendly and generous with their advice - Liz Sanders even gave us one of her 'Velcro toolkit' prototypes to keep in our studio!

And they say you should never meet your heroes......!

In conclusion:

The event was fantastic and very relevant to my practice. It shattered the preconceptions I had about the role of prototyping in research. The range of speakers all had very different ways of using prototypes which resulted in some lively discussion and debate.

If the symposium were to be held again (please, please hold it next year!) I would have just one request - that we have a prototyping workshop during the event itself!

Prototypes - approach with caution?

In the opening talk of Day 2 Glen Adamson presented us with the idea that a prototype can be a positive or negative thing.

A prototype can be used to persuade, to sell a vision - which can be slightly sinister in some cases. It can trick us into a false sense of security, letting us think we are seeing something completely resolved which can prevent us from questioning and exploring - 'a prototype can be a troublesome thing.'

During the discussion that followed the morning session Rosan Chow defended the prototype from this level of criticism, telling us that prototypes do no harm - it's the way people use them that can be harmful - or as another delegate put it - 'Guns don't kill people, people kill people'.

I had never previously thought of a prototype as something which could be negative - that it's powers could be used for evil rather than for good!

During the short film 'The American Look - A tribute to the men and women who design' you see the management team looking over a slick prototype of a 1950's Chevrolet. They glance at it, then shake hands with each other, nodding and patting each other on the back before heading off to smoke their pipes.

Still taken from 'The American Look'

I have to say that this is never the way I have seen a prototype treated in industry.

In my experience prototypes are scrutinised, pulled apart and questioned

The type of analysis required from different groups and the type of prototype required can depend on who the audience for your prototype is and at what level they will need to engage with it.

Throughout the conference the 'rough and ready', lo-fi prototyping method was a popular approach for our speakers. This reinforced the idea that a prototype was an unfinished, developmental tool.

Stuart Brown presented a slightly different angle. The high flying, time poor surgeons he was designing for would not have engaged with a basic prototype and so the design team employed high end rapid prototyping techniques to present their concept.

This Symposium as a Prototype?

It was mentioned on several occasions that this conference was a prototype. If so, did it fulfil the 'characteristics of a prototype' which were discussed over the two days?

The event was exploratory, opened up a discussion space, brought people together across different cultural and professional barriers, sparked conversations in the lecture theatre and outside.

Michael Schrage, Alex Murray-Leslie, Cat Rossi, Liz Sanders and Chris Van der Kuyl

The symposium was a carrier of many different types of knowledge which the delegates could pick and choose from according to their interests and experiences. The conference has also helped us make some sense of the future and explore where craft, design and prototyping is going.

In my opinion all the characteristics of the best kind of prototype!

Academia in the afternoon

Catherine Rossi

I didn't get a chance to sum up the afternoon sessions on Day 1 so I'm combining Day 1 and Day 2.

Day 1

Monday Afternoon speakers

Catherine Rossi ‘the role of prototypes in italian radical and post modern design.’

PHD student Catherine began her speech with a Through the Keyhole style introduction showing us the homes of celebs who’ve had their homes kitted out in Italian ‘Memphis’ furniture. Memphis was a Milan based collective of young designers headed up by the more experienced Ettore Sottsass. The collective designed Post modern fabrics, ceramics, glass, metal and furniture throughout the 1980s. Their bold use of acid colours and fake finishes was a reaction against the more conventional styles that had emerged in earlier years exploring kitsch 50s inspirations and futuristic concepts.

For someone who detests drawing and likes to get straight in with the making side, I found her talk a relief. I’m a hobby crafter and I’ve always got projects on the go but I’ve never been a fan of drawing on paper first or maybe I should feel ashamed to say, making prototypes (cough). The group challenged design by not following strict design processes – it wasn't just their work that was unique, so was their method – using no drawings or designs – it was more of a verbal communication between the designer and maker. I guess this it was we would call a kind of 'abstract prototyping' as it’s designing in the head. There’s no physical object to show ideas or suggestions – it’s just 'here it is', this is the product. This method works because the designs were so unusual – while conventional designs require more conventional methods, these post modernist designs didn’t. I like the fact this point was included in the selection of topics as again it showed a completely different take on what ‘prototyping’ is all about.

Michael Schrage from MIT also spoke about The Purpose of Serious Play and Dr Elizabeth Sanders from Maketools talked about Prototyping for the Design Spaces of the Future.

Day 2

Professor Norman M. Klein, California Institute of Arts: Embedded Media and the ‘Futures’ of Material Culture: Synopsis for a future essay, an emerging history of parallel words

Norman gave us a sneak preview into his new project, a novel/DVD/art piece called The Imaginary 20th Century. Explaining this through a selection of archival images, photos, illustrations, covers, designs, he spoke about the role of ‘embedding’ revealing some fascinating ‘past' takes on the future – in essence this showed just how unstable prototyping can be.

For example he showed illustrations of the year 2006 drawn in the 1970s, but sci-fi as full of prototyping as it is, never quite turns out that way. And yet at the same time, they do, but just in different circumstances – the examples were endless, in fact he has over 2000 of them. Being a cultural critic, urban and media historian, Norman’s approach was certainly different. I can’t explain much more than that so recommend you check out his website
Professor Pieter Jan Stappers

ID-StudioLab, University of Delft: Prototypes as Central Vein of Knowledge Development

The afternoon kicked off with a vibrant session by Pieter Jan Stappers who is professor of Design Theory at Delft University of Technology, Netherlands where he leads a group of researchers and educators that focus on the early phases of design, including mapping user contexts and exploring understanding through prototypes. His talk was about how prototyping can contribute to research. It was a fast paced session with charts and tables but it was his last slide that summarised his thoughts and made the most sense (to me anyway!) These were his 5 ways in which prototyping can contribute to research:

1. It confronts the world (so it has to work)
2. It confronts theories (you can’t hide behind abstractions, this is it!)
3. It communicates outside the core team (it’s not to be kept to yourself but can be shared, demonstrated and discussed with others)
4. It can test a theory (on numerous occasions, we’ve heard at the symposium that a prototype can be seen as a hypothesis)
5. It changes the world (a big statement that can be left to your own interpretations.)


Dr Rosan Chow from Deutsche Telekom Laboratories also spoke about a design method called 'Rip & Mix.'

Prototyping and art

Speaker: Simon Starling, Conceptual Artist: Five Thousand Years (Some Notes, Some Works)






Being at a craft symposium, it’s refreshing to hear from an artist and their take on prototyping. Simon Starling is a conceptual artist and was the winner of the 2005 Turner Prize. He talked about his fascination with transforming objects into new through using existing objects, installations, and pilgrimage-like journeys that he’s been undertaking for over a decade.

One of the most interesting points he raised was about time, how that in prototyping, although it takes a long time, once a prototype has been made, it’s all about speed, getting it out there before someone else does - while he is the opposite, and likes to slow things down.

An example he gave was needing balsa wood for a project, rather than going to a hardware shop he decided to go to Equador to get his materials. A waste of time ornecessary because it stays true to what he believes in? In art does one have more time to indulge in things like that because in industry this would never be possible would it?

While he talked us through some of his past projects, the one that stood out for me the most was a concept he about different people creating a cupboard, but making the same cupboard using instructions that were emailed to them. It touches on prototyping in a different way – the fact that several different people can try and make one prototype but end up with something slight different and I really like that. It’s just like following a recipe but unlike a recipe, a prototype shouldn’t have the same creative license to make changes otherwise it will lose it’s intention and I guess that’s one of the many things that makes prototyping so unique (and as the symposium is showing there are hundreds of things about prototyping that most people have never thought of before!