Why people struggle to prototype
In my daily work with corporate teams I often see that teams hesitate to build prototypes of their newly created ideas. It's seems as if there is some kind of inner barrier or fear to built something. Why is that? In my experience there are a couple of reasons for that:
We don't know enough: To build a prototype of our idea we need a very good understanding of what we are doing, which problem we want to solve and how our solution may look like. If we haven't understood these things yet, we will struggle to build a prototype.
The fear of failure: When building a prototype our idea will suddenly become very real. When becoming real, you can "fail". Building a prototype is kind of a reality-check. People often want to avoid this reality-check because they know that they can "fail". This inner fear of failure is very powerful. Especially in environments where failure is seen as something negative.
Difficulties to decide: When building prototypes you have to make decisions. A lot of them. A lot of people have problems to take these decisions. Because they have to commit to something and stand for it. If you take decisions you are vulnerable. People my challenge and confront you. And because a prototype is so concrete, it's very easy to challenge it. That makes us uncomfortable. We try to avoid that.
We are not used to doing it: Prototyping is a very effective way of learning, right? Children almost exclusively learn that way. They do something and try if if something works, when they fail, they try again. All the time. It's in our DNA, right from the beginning. But when we grow up and go through school, university and corporate job, we somehow "unlearn" this ability. Because these institutions are not built that way. They don't encourage that ability. That's why we often struggle to build prototypes. We are just not used to doing it.
Expert-Mentality: We often consider ourselves as "experts" in something. And experts don't need to build prototypes. They already know everything, right?
In my next post, we will look at what we as prototypers can do to help people overcome these struggles. Stay tuned!