Successive Prototypes Bridge the Gap Between Idea and Reality

Dismissing an idea because it doesn’t work in your head is doing a disservice to the idea.

(Same for dismissing someone else’s idea because it doesn’t work in your head.)

The only way to truly know if an idea works is to test it.

The gap between an idea and reality is the work.

You can’t dismiss something as “not working” without doing the work.

When collaborating with others, different ideas can be put forward which end up in competition with each other.

We debate which is best, but verbal descriptions don’t do justice to ideas — so the idea that wins is the one whose champion is the most persuasive (or has the most institutional authority).

You don’t want that. You want an environment where ideas can be evaluated based on their substance and not on the personal attributes of the person advocating them.

This is the value of prototypes.

We can’t visualize or predict how our own ideas will play out, let alone other people’s. This is why it’s necessary to bring them to life, have them take concrete form. It’s the only way to do them justice.

(Picture a cute puppy in your head. I’ve got one too. Now how do we determine who’s imagining the cuter puppy? We can’t. We have to produce a concrete manifestation for contrast and comparison.)

Prototypes are how we bridge the gap between idea and reality. They’re an iterative, evolutionary, exploratory form of birthing ideas that test their substance.

People will bow out to a good persuasive argument.

They’ll bow out to their boss saying it should be one way or another.

But it’s hard to bow out to a good idea you can see, taste, touch, smell, or use.