Or: Practising Approaches to Rapid Prototyping
The value(s) of Lego
We’ve been reading and writing a lot about the concept of ‘creativity’ over the past couple of weeks. Last weekend, I was lucky enough to visit a place where the air quite literally zings with innovation and imagination: the magical, brick-filled world of Legoland Resort Windsor.
The Lego brand lives and breathes play and creativity. Indeed, ‘creativity’ and ‘fun’ are two of the company’s six core values, along with ‘imagination’, ‘learning’, ‘caring’, and ‘quality’. Much like Lego bricks themselves, the values interlock (couldn’t resist) and support each other, with imagination described as “the foundation for creativity”, combining both “curiosity” (asking ‘why?’) and “playfulness” (asking ‘what if…?’).
The team at Lego define creativity as “the ability to come up with ideas that are new, surprising and valuable”. Of the definitions of creativity I’ve come across, this is without doubt my favourite so far. It captures the elements of novelty, surprise, delight, and joy, as well as the value of creativity as a vital skill.
Playfulness, creativity, experimentation, imagination, curiosity… over the past few weeks, I’ve come to appreciate just how important these things are for generating novel ideas and looking at challenges from different perspectives. Crucially, I’m also starting to see these things as actual skills, rather than mystical attributes an individual either has or doesn’t have. As the creators of global design company IDEO (and, serendipitously, real-life brothers) David and Tom Kelley affirm, creativity “is a natural human ability within us all” (2015: 11). It’s less of a fixed trait and more of a muscle – one capable of being exercised, strengthened, and trained. Which is exactly what we’re doing through this course.
Iteration and the Design Thinking Process
Lego’s definition of ‘learning’ emphasises the importance of taking an iterative approach to developing new ideas: “We learn through play by putting things together, taking them apart and putting them together in different ways. Building, unbuilding, rebuilding […] creating new things and developing new ways of thinking about ourselves, and the world.”
Iteration is also a key tenet of user experience design. According to de Voil, “user-centred design can only work if it is carried out in a series of iterations, where each iteration carries out a similar series of steps to the others. Each iteration improves upon and extends the results of the preceding ones, and must therefore be consciously designed as a learning exercise” (2020: 26). This emphasis on iterative learning is particularly pertinent in the context of the Lego brand, given that Lego itself is often used as a tool for developing a range of life skills in children, from communication and collaboration, to problem-solving and self-expression (see, for example, this wonderful article on Lego’s commitment to Learning Through Play).
Iteration is also fundamental to what is known as the ‘Design Thinking Process’. In the words of IDEO’s Executive Chair Tim Brown, “design thinking is a human-centred approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success” (2022). Roberto sees this kind of thinking as fundamental to overcoming what he terms ‘the linear mindset’. In place of meticulous planning followed by execution, businesses need to embrace “an iterative process of preparation, reflection, and adaptation” in order to solve novel problems (2019: 24).
There are a number of variants of the Design Thinking Process. Tom and David Kelley describe a process of inspiration, followed by synthesis, then ideation and experimentation, followed by implementation. In keeping with the non-linear spirit, these steps are often repeated at various stages throughout the process, such as after initial testing and user feedback has been gathered. Perhaps the most well-known version of the Design Thinking Process, which uses slightly different vocabulary but retains the same basic meaning as the Kelleys’ approach, is the ‘Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test’ model:
Ideation and prototyping
In last week’s Creativity topic, we looked at ideation and techniques for generating novel ideas. Ideation is a key part of the iterative design thinking process, where we generate ideas and consider divergent possibilities for solving a defined user problem.
Another key element is prototyping – what the Kelleys term ‘experimentation’ (2015: 23). According to them, “the most promising [ideas] are advanced in iterative rounds of rapid prototypes – early, rough representations of ideas that are concrete enough for people to react to” (ibid). In the early stages of design, these prototypes are generally low-fidelity – that is, they are deliberately rough representations of what the finished product might look like. They’re quick and cheap to create, facilitating iteration as they can readily be altered or thrown away as more information about the users or the problem being solved becomes available.
Reverse engineering Legoland's Magical Forest
This week’s challenge activity was designed to help us hone our skills in both ideation and prototyping by reverse engineering (that is, building quick, prototypal representations of) someone else’s finished creative artefact. By doing this, we can gain a greater understanding of the theory behind the product and the design decisions that brought it to life.
Inspired by my weekend trip to Legoland and the creative fodder awaiting visitors around every corner, I decided to reverse engineer a section of the Legoland Windsor Resort app. I downloaded it during our visit as we were walking around and enjoyed using it to make a schedule for the day and check live queue times for the rides. I thought it was simple, intuitive, and nicely themed, with fun graphics and a clever reminder system so you didn’t miss out on any of the shows or special activities being held around the park throughout the day.
My absolute favourite feature of the app, though, and by far my favourite experience of the day, was the Augmented Reality (AR) experience at The Magical Forest in the MYTHICA section of the park. Upon entering a magic portal, visitors are guided through a walk-through woodland experience by Bits & Bobs, the friendly baby Alicorn, passing Crystal Claw Crabs, Venus Fly Traps, and super-sized LEGO dragon eggs. The whole experience can be enjoyed without the AR element – and to be honest, I almost didn’t use it, as I struggled at first to work out how to activate it on my phone (take note please, Lego). But I’m so thrilled that I figured it out in the end.
I’ve come across AR before in the form of (everyone’s one-time favourite phone game) Pokémon Go. This experience, however, was integrated within the broader Lego world, and in many ways was a lot like one of the physical rollercoasters at the park. Just like when we were queuing for the dragon coaster, there was a growing sense of anticipation before we stepped through the entrance portal – built up by the signs encouraging us to download the app before entering the Forest. And just like our trip underwater on the Lego submarine, there were countless wonders just waiting to be discovered – all through the lens of your smartphone.
I loved everything about the Magical Forest experience, and I knew straight away that I wanted to have a go at unlocking the secrets behind the design and the story.
Storyboarding
I decided to start off by creating a storyboard for the app, based on the fictional mini-persona of 8-year-old Lily, the app’s primary user. I also created a secondary mini-persona for Lily’s mum, as I wanted to think about how the AR experience had been designed with the needs of both children and adults in mind. What’s more, I assumed that many of the primary users, particularly those aged around 8 and under, wouldn’t necessarily have a smartphone of their own, so would be reliant on an accompanying adult to help them access the experience.
I also created a mini-user story for my primary persona Lily, following the common ‘As a…I want/need to…so that…’ structure:
As a (young) visitor to Legoland, I want to have as much fun as possible, even when I’m not on the rollercoasters, so I can have the best day ever and not be bored.
In the spirit of keeping my storyboard prototype “quick and dirty” (Kelley 2015: 23), I only used pencil and just went over the text in black pen for clarity. I also added words to represent how my primary user might be feeling at each stage of the journey, and added quick supportive captions to help guide the story along:
It took me a bit of time to actually bite the bullet and get started with my storyboard, largely because I was worried that it’d look terrible. However, re-reading the section in the Kelleys’ book, Creative Confidence, on ‘Drawing Confidence’ gave me the boost to just sit down and draw without beating myself up for not being able to draw a realistic-looking Lego unicorn (...). After all, “wherever you fall on the artistic skills curve, half the battle is to resist judging yourself” (ibid: 63).
Paper prototyping
I’d considered jumping into a basic digital wireframe-style prototype in Figma next, but since I’m already getting to practice some of the Figma fundamentals at work at the moment, I thought I’d try another back-to-basics prototyping technique in the form of paper prototyping.
This is quite literally what it says on the tin – you create all your screens for a product or service on paper and get users to ‘click’ or ‘tap’ on certain parts of the page to fulfil a particular task. A human ‘computer’ then switches the pages depending on the user interaction, with another person observing what the user does to identify any pain points or unexpected actions. It’s helpful to ask the user to talk out loud as they’re completing the task, so you can get a better idea of their thought process.
I spent quite a bit of time researching this one, including watching an excellent video from the Nielsen Norman Group that demonstrated how to carry out user testing with paper-based prototypes (2003). The video was packed with tips and tricks for keeping tests running smoothly – for example, creating an ‘Under construction’ screen to be displayed if users selected something that took them to a screen you hadn’t built yet, as well as a ‘Loading…’ screen that the human ‘computer’ could use as a placeholder while they found the relevant screen. It’s also helpful to have a pack of sticky notes handy in case you need to create error messages and other types of notification on the fly if your user does something unexpected.
I had to get quite creative when it came to replicating the AR element of the Magical Forest user flow in my prototype, but I really enjoyed the process of creating all the screens. I also got my boyfriend to complete the task of activating the AR experience. It was really satisfying and insightful to watch someone else navigate the screens (sucessfully too!) – though I will caveat that my boyfriend also visited Legoland at the weekend, so was already familiar with the premise of the app. I’d like to try it out on someone else at some point to see how they find the experience.
Here’s a recording of the paper prototype test if you’d like to check it out (apologies in advance for our laundry drying in the background…):
References
BROWN, Tim. 2022. Design Thinking Defined [online] Available at https://designthinking.ideo.com/ (Accessed 14 June 2022).
KELLEY, David and Tom Kelley. 2015. Creative Confidence. London: William Collins.
LEGO. 2022. The LEGO Brand - The LEGO Brand Values [online]. Available at https://www.lego.com/en-gb/aboutus/lego-group/the-lego-brand/ (Accessed 14 June 2022).
NIELSEN, J. 2003. Paper Prototyping: Getting User Data Before You Code. Nielsen Norman Group. [online] Available at: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/paper-prototyping/ (Accessed 14 June 2022).
ROBERTO, Michael A. 2019. Unlocking Creativity: How to Solve Any Problem and Make the Best Decisions by Shifting Creative Mindsets. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.
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