Lo-fi prototyping with Blackhorse Responders

A practical, hands-on workshop on the value of prototyping.

Details

How long does it take?
2 hours

What’s the purpose?
To take sketchy initial ideas and make them tangible, enable richer conversations and accelerate progress.

Who is it for?
Young people aged 16-25 (but could work for a much wider range of ages).

Blackhorse Responders is a project based at Blackhorse Workshop in Walthamstow, working with young people aged 16-25. Over five months each cohort creates ideas for their own social movement, learning essential skills in design, making and activism.

The project chimes with me and I’ve been keen to find a way to work with the Responders for a while now so it’s been great to get the opportunity.

Lucy Martin, the Responders’s Project Manager, suggested I run a prototyping session. The young people are in the early stages of working out what their projects are going to be – several groups have formed around distinct themes and there are multiple ideas in each theme – so it’s the perfect time to use lo-fi prototyping to make things more tangible.

Lo-fi prototyping is a process that makes use of materials that are low cost, easily available and easy to work with like cardboard, plastercine and pipe cleaners. It allows you to very quickly give form to an idea. And it’s effective because:

decisions have to be made
ideas are made much more tangible and easier to play with
it’s very collaborative
richer conversations are made possible
it’s something that can be tested with its audience

Prototype a thing ❌

Prototype an experience ✅

Find out more

Here’s how the session works

Intro and warm-up
A short presentation/chat about the value of prototyping
20 mins

Focusing on one idea
Complete a simple worksheet to define an idea each group will focus on for the session.
10 mins

Making prototypes
Encouraging the teams to prototype an experience not a ‘thing’, thinking about the journey, not one moment. Quickly move from word and sketches to building something in three dimensions.
60 mins

Demo
Each team demonstrates their idea using their prototype, explaining the decisions they have made about tone, scale, experience, interaction, messaging.
15 mins

Wrap up
We each talk about what we’ve learned in the session.
5 mins

We cover a lot of ground very quickly, which makes the session exciting and engaging. Having something physical that can be pointed to and changed very easily makes it possible to make a lot of decisions very quickly. Their projects will evolve a great deal from here, their prototypes will help to accelerate that process.

My hope is that they will embrace this way of working and use it not only to define ideas but to test them with their audience too. As their ideas develop and they gain insights from testing their prototypes will become more and more refined and closer to achieving the desired outcomes and objectives.