Prototyping allows solution creators to build and test ideas before introducing them to a world where errors are costly. Prototyping is iterative. One after another, prototypes are build and tested then rebuilt incorporating the lessons of the previous iteration. The iterative process prototyping includes means the design solution is vastly improved before being tested in the world. Whether product, service, or collection of ideas, the design solution is never finished and shipped, merely tested in the world. The deeper concept here is provisionality.
Prototyping and the design mind rely heavily on provisionality. A solution or idea, even if insanely great, is never finished, never perfect, never the best. Design solutions express the best thinking, processes, tools, materials, and choices possible at a particular moment. 
A moment later, the mix that gave rise to the solution has changed and new possibilities for improvement are available. Also, the moment the design solution is free to be tested by the world, the number and variety of tests rapidly exceeds what any designer could accomplish or anticipate. Every test throws off knowledge and, if feedback was part of the design as it should be, the design solution will continue throwing off knowledge about new design challenges and ways to improve the design solution.
As design thinking continues to escape the design studio, we’ll notice a shift in what we mean by “done” and “finished.” The objects, processes, and policies — artifacts of design solutions — that surround us will liquefy a bit. This liquefaction is not the chaotic, rapidly accelerating change that frightens us. Beginnings and endings, roles, identities, and cultural norms will continue to become less rigid and more plastic. Selected and deployed design solutions will continue to perform as we develop our ability to see the lessons they are throwing off while being tested in the world. Provisionality in practice and thought allows us to accept and use the design solutions we have and see the opportunities for building the new solutions we need.
Strategic thinkers and planners know that failures large and small are part of long-term planning and execution. Training a workforce to make micro-models, prototypes, and create pathways for high-quality feedback helps our strategic actions exceed our expectations.
Expansive planning models, carried out over large spans of time, need to be built for failure. What was true (or assumed true) on Day 1 is unlikely to remain valid over time. By Day 93 or Day 500, a variance, large or small, between the model’s reality and actual reality will be present and, eventually, quite noticeable. Long- and short-term planning need to account for this reality variance. Part of building better plans beings with thinking about necessary failure, micro-models, and feedback loops.
Necessary failure. Reality variance contributes to model failure, but eliminating or reducing reality variance only enhances the model’s changes of meeting expectations. At Day 1, the model will have been tested, prodded and broken as it was created. These are safe failures. When the wheels fall off on paper, that’s OK (inconsequential failure); when they fall of at 120 mph, that’s less OK (failure with consequences). A model’s robustness reflects its ability to handle failures with consequences that are both predictable and unpredictable.
When a model does what we want it to do over time, we consider that a success. What we really want are models that outperform themselves; we want beautiful failures. Part of beautiful failure involves micro-modeling and feedback loops.
Micro-modeling. The success or failure of any large-scale model depends on the people executing it and, specifically, their ability to create the small, nimble micro-models for day-to-day actions. The quick pen and paper sketch of known information and available resources, the problem to be solved, and how to make that solution real means that people are keeping the inconsequential failure rate high. A higher inconsequential failure rate results in models that have eliminated some potential for consequential, in-the-wild failures. Some failures with consequences are unpredictable in both nature and magnitude.
How can strategic minds incorporate necessary failure and micro-modeling into large-sale plans? They can make sure that when systems speak, people are listening and prepared to respond with a better system.
Feedback & feedback loops. Feedback is information generated by our actions. For feedback to be useful, the information returned must be timely (if your parachute doesn’t open, you need to know now), clear (parachute tangled or not deployed?), contextualized (my parachute or a parachute?), and concise (you don’t want to wade through information on location, temperature, wind speed, and altitude to find your parachute status).
Having feedback that is timely, clear, contextualized and concise is worthless if it isn’t connected to micro-models and large-scale models. Micro-models, given how often they are created and adapted regularly incorporate feedback since they are based in part on the information available when they are created or modified. These feedback loops occur between models, at model inception, and not within them. Inception feedback loops help us make better models. Micro- and large-scale models designed to incorporate internal feedback loops make themselves better as they function in the wild.
Effective, lasting solutions begin start with asking the right questions. Here are five questions no solution designer or problem solver can do without.
1. What problem am I trying to solve?
Brilliant solutions that meet the wrong need are useless. Developing a clear expression of the challenge faced, its constraints and opportunities, and your needs and preferences is an early stage essential for the solution designer.
2. What resources do I need to solve it?
Designed a clever solution without the means to implement it? Yeah, not so clever. Check what resources you have and secure those you might need. Working with these constraints is a big part of solution design.
3. Who do I need to collaborate with?
Think about what kind of team you’ll need to create, test, implement, and maintain your solution. Involve them from the beginning. Teams don’t function very well unless everyone knows they are on the team and why.
4. How will I prototype, test, and refine the solution?
Prototype: Build your ideas into something you can stress, strain, and break without real-world consequences. Each build-break-fix cycle will make your solution exponentially stronger.
Test: How can you make the prototype tests realistic as possible? The closer you come to real-world testing, the better the data and ideas your tests will be.
Refine: Look back at your problem, resources and collaborators. Has anything changed based on your prototype testing? Adjust as needed and prototype again.
5. What feedback will tell me how well my solution works?
When your solution goes live, how will you keep making it better? Who or what will provide feedback on how it performs in the wild? What do you need to do to convert that feedback into action? Good solutions are never finished and only complete when they include robust feedback loops.
Human beings remain unparalleled communications platforms. Touchable screens, 3-D presentations, and virtual worlds present information in ways humans cannot, but when it comes to bandwidth, meaningful attention capture, and the ability to trigger action, the gold medal always goes to the human.
Being human, we like to take perfectly exceptional systems and flood them with mediocrity. Slideware like PowerPoint and Keynote are a great tools for presenting, discussing, and annotating visual information. They are also great tools for diluting your message and placing unnecessary barriers between you and your audience.
Here are seven ways to save your next presentation.
Yes, tell a beginning-middle-end story. We remember stories, pass them on, and they influence everything we do. We are story machines. Don’t get trapped inside the slide. Stories are bigger than that. Slides are only there to make your stories richer and deeper. Create a good story first, then use slides to make it better.
If you can’t flash a slide on the screen briefly and understand what it is about, there’s too much detail. Slides aren’t your story; they add to it and enrich it. Keeping your slides at a digestible, gist level lets people focus on you and the story you’re telling.
Use diagrams, sketches, maps, pictures, and charts to show your ideas and how the big picture connects to the details. Use text to call out key information. The image anchors ideas and creates a place to explore them. Use text to highlight the gist, but give the details with your voice. Save long sentences for the notes or report that accompanies your talk.
Live human communication delivers unbeatable information density and clarity. It’s how we’re designed. Images can create pathways and pools for the voice’s information flow. Images support the voice’s ability to generate emotional response, spark interest, and exchange ideas. Text = Sprinkles. Image = Icing. Voice = Cake.
Your voice, gestures, and expression convey more information per second than any slide can. Whatever is on the screen distracts people by dividing their attention. If you’re not pointing out how ideas connect in a chart, image or map, the slide is no longer useful. A solid black or white slide, makes sure everyone’s attention is on you, the ideas you have to share, and the conversation you’re creating.
The art of the presentation involves focusing and guiding your audience’s attention. Present one idea per slide so that people can focus on understanding and remembering one concept at a time. Your commentary will expand the concept beyond the gist by adding detail and examples. You can introduce groups or clusters of ideas and should periodically pull back and show (visually and orally) how what you’ve discussed fits into your overall topic. Just make sure each idea has its moment in the spotlight.
Before the presentation, practice three times and revise seven times. This is the minimum, and it’s easier than you think. Once you have a complete presentation, you’ll do your first revision and your second. Now, alternate practice and revision two times. You’ll feel and hear where to edit while you practice so the revisions should be natural. Do your fifth and sixth revisions collaboratively with a colleague or friend. Practice once more and capture those revisions. Good presenters meet this standard, excellent presenters double it, and the stars of the presentation world triple it.
Eyebeam’s Data Viz Challenge promotes data visualization innovation and good design’s ability to change and inform. The current challenge looks for good ways to present data showing how the United States government spends tax money. The guidelines Data Viz offers entrants are sound advice beyond the challenge.
Data Viz challenge guidelines for a good visualization:
Clarity Presents information that is accessible, accurate, and meaningful.
Relevance Communicates information that is timely, personal, or relatable.
Utility Provides insights that can inform action.
Aesthetics Embodies beauty, balance, and visual originality.
It might be better to think of them as rules. Try imagining how you can create an excellent data visualization, visual explanation, or presentation without one of these elements.
Guidelines and challenge details: datavizchallenge.org
The Analogy Game
The analogy game is a simple way to generate new ideas and solutions. You may have a tough problem or challenge. You might be analyzing a business, writing about leeks, or designing a prosthetic device. The analogy game takes you out of what you know—your area of expertise is also where your biases and blind spots flourish—and into areas that reshape what you know in surprising ways. Analogy games reveal fruitful next steps, additions, reconfigurations, or subtractions. They can lead to radically new ideas or extremely elegant solutions.
What You’ll Need
a stack of 3×5 cards, paper, pens, scissors, tape
Getting Ready
1. Cut 10 cards in half.
2. On each half, write one of these words: machine, organism, social relationship, hierarchy, network, ecosystem, country, equation, story, virus. This is your Analogy Card.
3. On one (and only one) card, describe your idea, problem or challenge. This is your Start Card.
Play!
Flip your Analogy Cards word-side down and shuffle them up. Draw a line down the center of a piece of paper.
Now flip over a card from your Analogy Deck and ask yourself, “How is my Start Card like the Analogy Card?” Tape the card at the top of the line down the middle of your piece of paper. Write your answers on the left and draw them on the right. Draw a reactance a few inches high and about page width after each answer. Repeat these steps for each Analogy Card.
Conversion: the Key to the Analogy Game
After working through an Analogy Card or all of them, walk through the sections on your paper and ask, “How can I incorporate this into my idea or solution? What is this saying about what I need to do or learn?” Write and draw answers to this in the rectangle you drew after each answer.
In groups: Each person does one analogy card. Results are shared in small groups. Groups share their conversions.
Variations: Time limits. Additional Analogy Cards. Using multiple Analogy Cards in each round. Writing or images only.
Analogy is often what takes innovators from point A to point B by way of points M, Z, and Q. Take the humble ink jet printer. (We won’t talk about the ink cartridge mafia and design decisions that make color ink jet and laser printers cheap to purchase but thirsty for ink and thus costly to maintain.) The printer moves the cartridge head in relation to the paper and squirts tiny drops of ink into precise locations.
ANALOGY 1: How is printing an object like printing a document? Result: additive manufacturing, 3D printing, and rapid prototyping.
ANALOGY 2: How is building a skin graft like printing a document? Result: Skin printing. An “ink” cartridge filled with skin substrate that “prints” a skin graft or bandage based on a 3D scan of the injury.
ANALOGY 3: How is building a road like printing a document? Result: Road printer.
Yes, you heard me, road printer. You know those nice patterned brick roads all over Europe? The ones that are more durable than asphalt and allow precipitation to more easily return to the water table? You can build these roads with a machine that rides over the graded area and prints road. The “print head” is made up of three or four people inserting bricks at the top of a road-width slide in the pattern that they want on the road. Due to the curvature of the slide, the bricks’ weight and gravity do the work of making them fit together snugly at the bottom of the slide where they arrive on the ground. http://www.tiger-stone.nl/index.php/multimedia/filmpjes
Analogy is one of many key tools in design and innovation. The more radical the analogy, the more likely we are to find ground-breaking solutions and ideas.
Seeing, solving and acting are the essential components of everything you do.
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