Pretotyping

Pretotyping

The aim is to strengthen the students’ competencies in converting ideas and thoughts into ‘concrete’ objects reinforcing their relevance and usability for the challenge.

1. The teacher will have prepared the materials for pretotyping before the lesson and should demonstrate some of the uses of the materials to inspire the students.
2. The students can choose to pretotype their chosen idea from the previous phase however, this depends on the timeframe and purpose of the lesson.
3. The students are given a precise timescale to complete their pretotype and which materials they can use.
4. The students develop their pretotypes.
5. The students present their pretotypes to the group of potential users such as experts, a judging panel, the teacher, fellow students or the target group.  The resultant feedback and evaluation may result in further pretotyping to improve the idea until the product or process becomes concretised and reaches the prototyping stage.

The materials used will vary depending on what is available at the educational institute. It could include wood, plastic, polymeric foam or Lego. The process of pretotyping will be the same no matter which materials the students work with in this early stage of the prototyping processes. The pretotype stage contributes to the beginning stages of concretisation of the students’ suggested solutions and is a tool which helps students to build a link between idea generation and idea selection and action.
When doing this online, the teacher asks students to find prototyping materials from their homes. Each student must build their own pretotype and show and explain it to the students via Zoom/Teams etc.

Inspired by: www.pretotyping.org.