Daniele Catalanotto: I'm going to share another which is from Kseniia and she is asking:

I'm not a maker, how do I prototype?

So she's not coming, from the classical design degree thing, graphic design or product design, but still she is learning all things about service design.

And so she's struggling to. Get started with prototyping. Obviously, I have a few ideas, but I'm interested in yours. What would you have

Andy Polaine: I get to go first. So you've got it so good these days, kids, there are so many tools and platforms out there, whether it's something like Canva or there's a whole bunch of templates and design patterns and stuff. And to prototype something it depends on what you're trying to prototype and what you want to get out of it.

But you can make some nice looking, and they don't have to be amazing, but you can make some decent looking. Tangible artifacts using all of that stuff in general what you're looking with that service design first prototype at the very least is, what's the value proposition, what's the service proposition, people understand it, and also is it coherent, and so you can, the coherent bit you can borrow, you can stand on someone else's shoulders and go, you know what, the whole kind of design, Here there's a whole bunch of templates for, how I present, for kind of what a mock up of a website might look like, what a mock up of an ad might look like, what some, I don't know, some physical things might look like that you can use. In Senya's case, I know there's also some 3D actual kind of product stuff. There are bunch of tools from so from Google or for using, that people use for kind of 3D printers they're not, there's also a whole library of kind of 3D objects and stuff. So there's some things that you could play with.

It's certainly worth a little experiment with and say, can I do the kind of Lego version of this and get something similar? But you know also at the very least, if you can do a stickman storyboard, that might be good enough because actually what you're trying to do is just to get the sense of the day in the life of or the kind of hero journey through this and understand, what are the key steps, what are the transitions and so forth. And then later you can think about, Oh, I need to make something that looks nice. But really you're just trying to get a sense of the kind of ecosystem and the flow of that first. That's my view.

Daniele: Yeah, and Canva is such a beast. People don't know how good this thing is, like just being able to get a template and then, removing backgrounds, even generate images stuff. It's it's pretty strong and it's free. It's free. So this is crazy.

On my side, the way I answered it, I said, you know, do you, when you were a kid, did you play Lego? Yeah.

Andy: Yeah.

Daniele: And she said, yeah. Okay, so you know how to prototype because that's one way you can prototype, just build something with Legos and that usually works pretty well with services, which are interactions that are intangible.

not just usually just not just a wire frame. It's like a more complex thing. And you can, tell a story saying, okay, this is this person, this is Bob. And you can tell the story of Bob going through the different steps. And. We have smartphones, so we can just record ourselves telling the story.

And that's something that you can, do very simply. It's visual, it's a bit quickie, but it And if you don't like Legos, you can do what A great mate that we both have, Manu Franiere from the HES-SO Valais, he's really deep into the kind of using theatre, to prototype stuff.

And obviously, that sounds like even more fancy and complicated, theater is just being with another friend of yours and say, you play the cop, I play the prisoner, and this is the setting let's try something. And again, you can record it, and then you can share it, edit it, and you already have kind of a service experience there.

Ah. Especially, for all these non digital things, which I think are a big part of what we love about service design also using non digital ways of prototyping, Lego role play it, it just

Andy: Yeah. I think, one of the things with that is always to remember, what is it you're trying to test? What is it you're trying to find out? Discover? Because prototyping is not just about making a nice looking thing, but it's about that. And. I think the other thing with all those intangible things is you don't need much you can have really rubbish drawn things on a piece of paper and you know use a table as a you know whatever as a kind of prop and chairs and when you act it out you're looking to see two things one you can go one you know how does this feel you What do I feel like?

What did that feel like being the service provider then? Did that feel weird? That interaction and that kind of stuff which is really useful with the acting out theatre bit. And I think the second bit is this idea that, as soon as you make something tangible, it's what you were saying before to Sophia's question you start thinking and you've got this idea in your head, it always seems perfect in your head and as soon as you make it, it's oh, it's really imperfect and there's all these problems with it.

That's really great, right? And as you start making your, you're making to think. And you're going, oh no, but that's not going to work. Oh no, I see that. That's never going to work. But I can do this. I could do that. And that's a really important part of that. And for that, it doesn't have to be sophisticated at all.

Daniele: And I think that's the best tip that we can give based on all the previous coaching sessions that we did, but also just with these two elements, which is. I think, don't take it so let's have some fun and, like not overcomplicate it because the goal of all of these things is just to get started somewhere.

And usually once you get started, that's when then the work happens, because the hard thing is to The difficult thing is to start, it's not to then improve it. So find something simple that you can use to just get started.

Andy: Very good. Very good. I agree. Absolutely agree.

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