Creating new learning experiences like onboarding programs, training activities, or youth employment initiatives requires many creative minds, the ability to work rapidly, and a willingness to learn from failures. At Vancity, where I work, our business model of member-led innovation requires us to transform insights from our members into financial products and services. Prototyping is a tactic that brings such an approach to life. I know this because last week my team tested a new activity, launched a learning experience in a new community, and reflected on a new youth internship program. Here’s what I learned from a week of prototyping.
Engage many people in the process
A prototype is more likely to succeed when many stakeholders from your community are involved in creating and testing the idea. R “Ray” Wong focuses on nine critical components for effective customer and employee engagement. As we worked to adapt an existing learning program in a different community our team made sure that the members of that community were deeply involved in how the experience was designed and delivered. This helped with everything from logistics to selecting the best catering to getting the inside track on some pretty stunning behind-the-scenes tours of very awesome community partners.
Blend blue sky with reality
The cool thing about prototypes is that they offer a blank slate for problem solving. Anything is possible. The old ways can be scrapped regardless of how much organizational inertia or petty politics are keeping them around. Anything can be achieved thanks to this novel creation! Everything will happen!
Sort of.
Realistically, not everything in an organization will change with one prototype of a service, product or experience. For example, when we tested a new activity – one in which participants actually build a prototype of something in 45-minutes – the experience actually made some folks uncomfortable. They wanted to do the same thing that they’d always done. So, we slowed it down, specified the instructions, and helped them understand the purpose of the activity. And then it took off!
Remember, the more that you can simplify and refine your idea(s), the easier it will be to prototype.
Create a fail space
What I mean by this is that the people who are prototyping the thing – in my team’s case we were making several learning experiences – need to be okay with what they make not working out. Or just flat-out sucking. The thing about prototypes is that many of them don’t work well (or at all) and people need to be okay with that.
Simple phrases like, “it’s a pilot program and we expected some things to be a bit clunky; we’ll make them better next time” go a long way to instill confidence in people and inspire their creativity, too. When folks know that it’s okay to fail they will take bigger risks and, ideally, bring an idea or an experience to its full potential.
Get messy
Prototyping isn’t a clean business. Disagreements happen. Time runs out. Things might move too quickly for some team members. Or, in an experience that I had, people might like your idea and hate what you called it: “John, prototyping isn’t something that people will understand. It’s a noun, not a verb.” It wasn’t until I opened my idea up to pokes, edits, reframing, and, in this case, erasing that it really took off.
The experience of prototyping itself is wonderfully messy, too. When we prototyped a group interviewing tactic for our youth internship program there were emails, calls, whiteboard sketches, spreadsheets, videos, lesson plans, and dress rehearsals that had to happen in a short amount of time to ensure that the experience was novel and also organized and professional for our candidates.
We did it. It was messy. And the results were pretty awesome.
Document learnings immediately
However you do it – photos, journaling, interviews – the impact of your prototype on your community needs to be understood quickly. In our case, we had ideas about what to look and listen for in terms of questions and comments from participants. Our team also went into the experiences with open minds and open hearts so that we would notice the stuff that we hadn’t planned for, too. For example, we prototyped a learning experience in a new community because we wanted to accommodate our colleagues by meeting them where they’re at (in Victoria); however, what our participants were most grateful for was that we brought our expertise into their community and helped bring alive the stories of the business, non-profit and retail members from their neighbourhoods. It wasn’t just that they didn’t have to travel across the Salish Sea.
Such a simple and powerful insight was captured right away and has already begun to inform how we might deepen relationships in other communities where Vancity members live and work.