15 Module 8 – Prototyping and Financial Viability
Welcome to this module titled prototyping and financial viability, making your vision real.
By the end of this module, you should have a better idea of how you might make your idea real in a virtual setting.
Let’s start by talking about what a prototype actually is. A prototype is an early visual representation or model of a concept or process. I know that sometimes “prototype” can be a really intimidating term because people think, Oh, you need to have a functioning device or you know, something that actually works. But that’s not at all the case, especially as early on in the design process as you are.
A prototype is precise and demonstrates how the problem is reduced or eliminated completely. It’s precise in the sense that it is devoted entirely to solving the problem, and when you go to mass market to sell your device, then you can add all the bells and whistles and the shiny finishes later. A prototype is done in iterations that improve with time. It’s very likely that your very first prototype is not going to be awesome, but it will be good at some things, it will be good at helping you visualize your solution, and it’ll only get better with time as you think about it. Finally, a prototype is a design, a system, a device or a policy. A prototype doesn’t have to be a functioning device, it can be a drawing, it can be a policy, or it can be a system.
On screen, you’ll see two examples of very early versions of prototypes. The example on top is a prototype of an alleyway beautification project with a digital design. The proposed design is overlaid digitally on the alley in which it was to be implemented. This helps give you a sense of what the alleyway might look like following the beautification project.
Below that, you’ll see a prototype for a device that consists of a blanket with several LEDs embedded in it. While the circuit is not at all functional, and it’s not even a halfway decent circuit diagram, it does give you a basic sense of where components may need to go on a device that exists like this.
Now, you may be asking yourself in a virtual setting when all of my teammates are separated from me, how do we go about prototyping? What are we capable of? And what can be a convincing prototype?
Let’s go through a few examples. If you’re in the mobility challenge area, you might come up with an idea for a bus shelter that allows proper social distancing by including barriers between passengers. In order to do this, you can simply take a screenshot from Google Streetview, put it into MS Paint, and draw an overlay of what you think this might look like. By creating this design into a quote on quote, real setting, you start to ask questions about it. What should it be made of? How should it be designed to withstand extreme weather conditions? Do I need to make any considerations for it being so close to the road? These are just some examples of questions you might have that you’re only going to