About

Prototype Seattle is an intensive, tuition-free experience where young creatives partner with talented designers and work in diverse teams to solve real-world problems.

Vision

Prototype Seattle is about stretching yourself to learn new ways to think, work with others, and solve problems.  We see grit, agility, collaboration, resilience and a focus on human needs as 21st century literacies, and we believe that a 21st century education treats young people as creators and real-world knowledge-makers.  Prototype Seattle is a new way of school where failure leads to learning, flexibility is prized, and real world problems are solved.

Prototype #1, November 2011

Working as teams under a deadline, Prototype creatives rapidly prototyped and adapted solutions that used mobility and mobile technology to solve human problems.

Young creatives spent the first day understanding the design thinking process, learning about how to work effectively in a group, empathizing with the needs of users, and defining a human problem statement around the topic of mobility and mobile technology. On Day 2, they learned ideation techniques, brainstorming hundreds of possible approaches and then rapidly prototyped 4 or 5 of them. At the end of the camp, they presented their solutions to a jury of professional designers.

Day One

Day One started with an empty room in Building 92 at Microsoft.  Experienced educators and designers got there early to set up breakfast, but the event only started once the young creatives entered the room and started to claim the space. 26 young creatives were admitted – and 26 showed up, on a school holiday, when they could have been sleeping in.

We began with the quote by Samuel Beckett: “Fail, Fail Again. Fail Better,” and an admonition to lean into failure, to learn from it, to keep going back to it again and again as a source of strength. This countercultural admonition – so contrary to what young creatives often hear in school – was our theme.

David Bill, a co-founder of Prototype Design Camp and Director of Academic Technology at the Urban School in San Francisco, led the creatives in a short overview of the design thinking process.  We outlined five stages of thinking: Empathy (for the user); Define (the problem); Ideate (possible solutions); Prototype (solutions); Feedback.  In short order, creatives went through all five phases and prototyped a new wallet.

The groups combined diverse young creatives from public, private, and parochial schools from across the area. Each group came up with a name and a six-word biography for their team. Once groups were formed, it was time to issue the challenge to the group: what could mobile technology improve? What could be improved about mobile technology? And to understand the answer, it was time to go into the field.

Empathy

Ming-Li Chai, a designer with Microsoft, led creatives through the process of thinking about the future.  By the time any product we design goes to market, the world has changed.  How, then, do we design solutions for a world that doesn’t yet exist?  Students spread out through the Microsoft campus to observe people interacting with technology.  What’s working?  What’s not?  Then, they returned to Prototype to share their observations and cluster into their groups. 

Define

Tazin Shadid, a researcher at Microsoft, presented on how designers define the problem and create a problem statement as well as a statement of the ideal future state.

Creatives went into the field, interviewing users, photographing their context and seeking to understand their needs.

Day Two

On Day Two, organizers showed up an hour early to open the building and set up the room.  They found students already waiting outside in the cold, eager to get in – at 7:30am on a rainy Saturday morning, when their friends were safely in bed.  They were getting no grades, no money, no prizes, no credit.  No one had told them they had to be there.  This was a good sign – that the process and the group was motivating enough.

Ideate

Pam Parvarris of Synapse, a Seattle-based product development firm, spoke as our guest expert on ideation.  She introduced several specific ideation techniques and explained how they have led Synapse to engineer new products like AirFloss.

Emphasizing that you want ideas – lots and lots of ideas, hundreds of them, ranging from the small and highly achievable to the entirely outrageous – she led the creatives to generate their own idea horizons with possible approaches at 1,000, 10,000, and 30,000 feet from reality.

Students grouped the ideas into buckets, ranked which felt most realistic, and then moved on to prototyping.

Prototype

After a presentation from a game designer at DigiPen Institute of Technology, students developed multiple prototypes, stopping to get feedback along the way.  Mentors emphasized the iterative nature of prototyping - that you only want to make it good enough to get feedback, find out what works, and then learn from the pieces that fail.  Throughout the afteroon and into the morning of Day 3, students developed multiple ways that their ideas could be realized.

Young creatives sprawled across the room, covering the walls with sticky notes and filling white boards with their ideas. They  sat on the floor hot-glueing materials together, twisting pipe cleaners, molding clay, and stapling felt to create their prototypes.

David Bill came over mid-way through the process.  His group was humming without him.  “I love that my role as a teacher is gradually becoming obselete,” he noted.

Day Three

On Day 3, students scrambled in early and grabbed a Top Pot doughnut, quickly joining their teams to put the final touches on their prototype.  After a night of sleep and reflection, they saw new flaws and new opportunities where many of them had thought they were finished.  Working quickly, they moved through one or two more iterations.

Testing

Students entered the final phase of the design thinking process by introducing their prototype to outsiders for feedback.  We invited designers from Frog Design, Artefact, and Microsoft; a teacher from Eastside Prep; a leadership consultant and former college professor.  Together, as a jury, they heard full pitches, reviewed prototypes, and delivered specific, process-based feedback in view of the group.  For many of the students, this was the highlight of the experience: an opportunity to hear from practicing designers and get pointers on where they could go next.

After mingling with the jury, the three days were over. We spent some time reflecting on our time together.

“How was Prototype Seattle?  What would you share with your teachers?,” we asked.  One young creative wrote:

“I would tell my teachers that focused, risk-free collaboration should be the teaching style of the future. I accomplished more in 3 days at camp than I have in the three months that I have been in school this year. A new teaching style based on Prototype Design camp could foster a generation of collaborative, creative and driven problem solvers. This would open up a new world of possibilities.”

Who Should Apply?

Prototype applicants are students in grades 9-12.  They are creative problem-solvers, curious by nature, with a diverse set of passions and interests.While all candidates should be in good standing at their school, we’re less interested in GPA or SAT scores, and much more interested in a student’s ability to be innovative, to collaborate, to push boundaries, to ask great questions, and to wonder what is possible.Additionally, a natural willingness to work hard under deadlines – on behalf of their teams – while overcoming real-world challenges is a must.Applications will re-open once the next iteration of Prototype Seattle is announced.

How To Apply

The November 2011 iteration of Prototype Seattle has finished.  For information on any future iterations of Prototype Seattle, check back, follow @PrototypeCamp on Twitter, or “like” Prototype Design Camp on Facebook.Prototype Design Camp is tuition-free and supported by our sponsors.

Sponsors

• Microsoft
• Recharge
• DigiPen Institute of Technology
• Ah Ha Creative
• Synapse Product Development

Follow

Twitter: #PrototypeSeattle for event-specific items and @PrototypeCamp for general items

Dates and Location:

November 11-13 | 8am-6pm | Microsoft Campus Building 92 | Redmond, Washington.