How prototypes help us dream

What I learned over my career is that humans are not very good at thinking about something new. We are not good in imagining things. That's why we are very bad anticipating how the future may look like. Especially when this future may be radically different to what we already know and when we have no reference-points in our lives we can built upon.

For us in Business Design this is very important to understand because our ideas are often things which doesn't exist yet. Therefore we constantly have to think and communicate about something which people don't know (yet). Often times we try to communicate our new ideas with words and powerpoint slides. But this is not enough. We need to give people something to touch, to smell, to play around with in order to help them understand why they need this and how this fits in their future life.

I want to give you an example: Everybody has read numbers about the superior acceleration and quietness of electric cars. But we only realize what that really means when we drive an electrical car the first time. We have to experience it.

That's when prototypes can help tremendously: Prototypes help people understand and dream at the same time. Prototypes are catalysts for peoples imagination and help to bridge the gap between reality and future.

Or, how a former colleague of mine Dominik Maier once said:

Prototypes are almost like a glimpse through a keyhole into the future