Critical Prototyping - Discovery and Inquiry
A strategy for generating insights for new technologies
New technologies (such as AI, IoT, Quantum Computing and XR) require new design strategies. As design materials, they typically have unique affordances, limitations, ethical implications, and unpredictable outcomes. Because of this, designers have an extra responsibility to be thoughtful about the strategies they use to design for these new opportunities. Conventional sketching and prototyping often do not dig deep enough to create the most desirable outcomes, especially in the context of pervasive silicon valley techno-optimism.
NOTE: This is a revised version of an essay I published on Medium in 2019.
For more thoughts on the differences that AI/ML creates for designers, see my paper “Reimagining the Goals and Methods of UX for ML/AI”.
Critical prototyping is a sketching/prototyping approach focused on discovery and inquiry. This is distinct from the typical prototyping done in a product development cycle, where the goal is to converge on a solution and produce a final, released version.
Problem Setting, Divergent
In contrast to product prototyping, critical prototyping does not attempt to advance solutions. Instead, it explores a design space in search of insights, novel approaches and new opportunities for contexts where the potentials for design are not fully explored. Rather than solving problems, it’s a divergent process of problem setting.
New, Unconstrained Contexts
Critical prototyping is ideal for the wide-open, unconstrained (perhaps irresponsible) contexts created by new technologies, materials, cultural changes, scientific discoveries, conceptual approaches, and other new territories.
For example, IoT was often described as a solution in search of a problem, and the initial techno-determinism of autonomous vehicles saw AVs as solving every transportation problem. These are examples of missed opportunities for designers to apply critical prototyping as a thinking-through-making approach (also known as Research Through Design - RtD), with the goal of discovering interesting design directions (and avoiding bad ones!) beyond the obvious and cliched.
Generating Insights
It’s important to note that critical prototyping is an iterative, reflective process where artefacts are not the only outcome. The artefacts must be complemented with insights that are generated through critical reflection on:
the artifacts themselves
the scenarios
productive failures and successes
paths not taken
people’s responses to the prototypes
This process is part of an overall reflexive design practice in which the designer intentionally and iteratively builds tacit and explicit knowledge, as they pursue their lines of interest. It’s an ongoing, circular process of curiosity driven making and reflection that generates novel insights that lead to new:
opportunities and constraints
design research questions
aesthetics
interests, values, and goals for the designer
immersion and discovery in a topic, technology, or population
In comparison to Dunne & Raby
Dunne & Raby have been influential in bringing a more critical approach to design, but it’s a mistake to think that their particular approach to criticality is the only one. Leading up to their seminal Speculative Everything book, Dunne & Raby created A/B, a list-as-manifesto comparing design as it is commonly understood, with their particular version of design. In the book, they suggest that C, D, E, etc. should follow.
In that spirit of dialog, and as a way to locate Critical Prototyping, I’ve created a “C” column. My version sometimes goes in a somewhat different direction, especially since some of their original A/B dichotomies seem artificial to me.
| A (conventional design) | B (Dunne & Raby) | C (ritical prototyping) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Affirmative | Critical | Propositional | |
| Problem solving | Problem finding | Problem setting | |
| Provides answers | Asks questions | Discovers questions | |
| Design for production | Design for debate | Design for inquiry | |
| Design as solution | Design as medium | Design as practice | |
| In the service of industry | In the service of society | In the service of design | |
| Fictional functions | Functional fictions | Exploratory fictions | |
| For how the world is | For how the world could be | What is the world? | |
| Change the world to suit us | Change us to suit the world | Change design to suit a context | |
| Science fiction | Social fiction | Reflexive fiction | |
| Futures | Parallel worlds | World building | |
| The "real" world | The "unreal" world | The "imaginary" world | |
| Narratives of production | Narratives of consumption | Narratives of interaction | |
| Applications | Implications | Disruptions | |
| Fun | Humor | Play | |
| Innovation | Provocation | Invention | |
| Concept Design | Conceptual Design | Embodied design | |
| Consumer | Citizen | Culture | |
| Makes us buy | Makes us think | Makes us think through making | |
| Ergonomics | Rhetoric | Experience | |
| User-friendliness | Ethics | Discovery | |
| Process | Authorship | Research |
There is also a relationship to these ideas in Bill Buxton’s differentiation between sketches and prototypes, as defined in his book “Sketching User Experiences” (figure 52, page 140) and then in a paper he posted to CMU’s website (where he teaches).
| Sketch | Prototype | |
|---|---|---|
| Invite | Attend | |
| Suggest | Describe | |
| Explore | Refine | |
| Question | Answer | |
| Propose | Test | |
| Provoke | Resolve | |
| Tentative, non committal | Specific Depiction |
Critical Protoyping is similar in many ways to Buxton’s definition of Sketching. But in my experience as a designer and technologist, I find that Critical Prototyping finds a productive place outside of Buxton’s dichotomy, bringing in more theoretical and controversial issues such as those around social justice, societal impact, etc. I also find that implementing a working sketch in an actual technology (vs. something more sketchy) helps in educating the designer about the grain of the material. This is especially true when working with/inventing design for new technologies such as XR and AI.
In working with new technologies, much of my thinking has been influenced by my participation in Mike Kuniavsky’s annual Sketching In Hardware conferences. In this framework, hardware becomes the material for sketching rather than pencil and paper.
NOTE: This is a revised version of an essay I published on Medium in 2019.