Well, now comes that time. My time with the Business Innovation curriculum has come to an end. I must say, I came into this class thinking, “Oh man, this is going to be pretty easy. It’s a business class! On the innovation of all things. My biggest strong suit is as an engineer!” Man, was I mistaken… in a great way!
As far as I knew, as a typical, normal engineer, prototyping is where you take an idea and build a physical product of that idea. It doesn’t have to be perfect or anything, but it must encapsulate the same function as the idea intended. Essentially, a prototype is a physical manifestation of the product and its function. What I learned in this class completely reworked my understanding of the word “prototype.”
So in this business class, we did this lovely exercise on prototyping: Improv sketches!! We all had a blast getting up and expelling a little fun out there by doing cleverly crafted skits, courtesy of the amazing screenwriter Hesam. I got to act out a glitchy but overly friendly server robot, and boy, did I act the part! Everyone got their giggles out, and then we got the real inside scoop on why we were doing what we were doing.
The goal was to interview some aspect, or rather, feeling, that one of the people we interviewed on third spaces said. For context, third places are very special places an individual has that are separate from home and work, where they can truly relax and be themselves. This sort of startled me. Feeling? I begin to wonder what in the world Hesam meant. I literally thought prototyping was a physical object that served the exact (or near exact) purpose the main product was supposed to do. Here I am, needing to design something to convey one experience or feeling of a particular aspect of what an interviewee said about their favorite third place! I was at a loss for words. My confidence dipped. I, for the first time in this class, was clueless about what to do.
We got into groups in order to tackle this very perplexing problem. Luckily, there was a fantastic structure for tackling this issue. We first began by formulating POV statements. These are just general statements about the very thing we want to look into. My team chose a very peculiar interviewee whose third space was not in the physical world but in the digital world: online forums. We discussed the various appealing traits of online forums and constructed a very crude POV statement delving into the attractive nature of online third spaces. This was so difficult as I literally felt like sludging through thick, cold molasses, plunging along to get to the magical POV statement.
The next part was even harder. We now had to create an HMW statement (How might we statement). Now we actually had to distinguish the very feeling we want to convey and formulate the experience to demonstrate it in the hearts of others. This was incredibly difficult for me. I still couldnt get over the mental hump of a prototype being on a feeling and conveying that feeling. Through much discussion, my team finally came up with an HMW on courageous recklessness.
Now for the nearly impossible part: being able to put that feeling in others. We implement a very particular brainstorming method outlined by the class, and it was super fun imagining ideas in parallel universes and having little fun guidelines. It really opened up the potential of many ideas. Eventually, we settled on a grand idea: a hodge-podge of Murder in the Dark, Werewolf, and Secret Hitler, married with Among Us. The details of the game to ensure it captivated what we wanted got super complex and difficult, but it was coming along… until we realized we only had 10 minutes to present it. We had to pivot!! It was super disheartening and worrisome and honestly quite sad, but we managed to quickly adapt within a few good minutes.
We came up with the idea of doing a sort of clean, black and white art gallery-style setting where there were 3 exhibits, each with a deep question like “what truly motivates you?” We already answered the prompts. The class was to anonymously write the answer to a special deep prompt we gave them and put them into a covered box. Then we posted them on a board and had them get up to go read the class’s responses. Then, we had them sit down and gave them the chance to take a courageous stand and share what they wrote on the board. Then we opened the floor for anyone to speak up if they had experienced something similar. The goal was to show how putting one’s out there by being deep can lead to deep friendships, like what our interviewee experienced.
Despite the crazy struggle and daring last-minute pivot, we literally prototyped a feeling… in 4 hours. That is absolutely crazy! Even though this class has come to an end, the things I took away from it, the feelings I felt, and the knowledge I gained will be with me forever, especially this one. This is a rather fond memory of mine. Thank you all for such an incredible experience! There is truly nothing in the world like this experience, and nothing can recreate it. Again, thank you so much!