Prototyping across the Disciplines: Designing Better Futures

Edited by Jennifer Roberts-Smith, Stan Ruecker, and Milena Radzikowska

If people from different fields are going to work together on projects, then they need to begin to understand each other. They can be separated by the words they use, the ways they work and how they think. However, in many fields there is common ground, in the attempts to create what is sometimes called inventive knowledge. These fields progress not only by understanding increasingly more about what already exists, but by making guesses about possible better futures. The guesses consist of small forays into that future, using strategies that are variously called learning through making, research through design or, more simply, prototyping.

While traditionally associated primarily with industrial design, and more recently with software development, prototyping is now used as an important tool in areas ranging from materials engineering to landscape architecture to the digital humanities. This book collects current theories and methods of prototyping in a dozen disciplines, illustrating them through case studies of actual projects, whether in industry or the classroom.

This edited collection aims to provide a context, a theoretical framework and a set of methodologies for interdisciplinary collaboration in design. Each chapter offers a different disciplinary perspective on prototyping, providing a case study as a point of comparison for identifying commonalities and divergences in current practices. Contributions are from a group of scholars with worldwide experience of working and presenting in design, and who are currently based in Canada, the United States, Chile and Brazil.

Intellect, 2021

Introduction

Our goals
What’s ahead

PART 1: QUESTIONING ASSUMPTIONS

1.1 Cosmopolitical interventions: Prototyping inter-species encounters By Pablo Hermansen and Martin Tironi

1.2 How industrial prototypes behave thru structure, function, and material By Zhabiz Shafieyoun and Gerry Derksen

1.3 To design is to pretend: Observational modeling and Analysis by children By Teresa Dobson, Ernesto Peña and Milena Radzikowska

1.4 Prototyping text analysis in the motorcycle shop By Milena Radzikowska, Alyssa Kelle and Madison Snell

PART 2: PROBLEM SOLVING

2.1 Prototyping with physical-digital interactions: Conceptual models for hacking the constructed world as an inquisitive process By Juan De La Rosa

2.2 Designing tabletop games with the use of prototypes By Simone L. Sperhacke and Maurício M. E. S. Bernardes

2.3. Octagonal research globe for prototyping emergent immersive reality experiences By Lisa E. Mercer and William C. Bullock

2.4 Persist, pivot or punt: The role of prototyping in teams involved in a commercial arts-led innovation programme By David Goodwin & Jill Tomasson Goodwin

PART 3: DESIGNING DISRUPTION

3.1 Making and appreciating theatre: Lessons in ethical relationality and prototype expansion By Kathleen Gallagher and Scott Mealey

3.2 Prototyping and the critical practice of landscape architecture By David L. Hays

3.3 Teaching materials engineering through embodied cognition By John A. Nychka and Glenn D. Hibbard

3.4 Using prototypes to develop research questions By Stan Ruecker and Guilherme Englert Corrêa Meyer

Conclusion

1. What we’ve learned
2. Final thoughts

References