I've been asked to give a short speech at the future leaders project of IVE. The project is meant for students who want to learn more about the practical side of starting your own business. Participants were business students mostly, who learn all about the numbers and statistics, but never actually created something, implemented an idea into reality.
Last year I've been talking about sustainability. This year it's about prototyping. Prototyping takes a big part in a designers process, so for us it's the obvious thing to do once we've come up with an idea. It helps to test it, to visualise it, even to sell it to a customer. But for the business students it was the first time they actually had to make a model, a sketch or a digital prototype of any sorts.
It made me realise how different a designer approaches a project. And how valuable this way of "design thinking" really is. Prototyping is all about making mistakes, before you invest the big money, experiment, get new ideas.
Working with the students was a lot of fun. During the workshop they had to come up with a business idea and make a businessplan and a quick prototype.
