Make it real

Design-Thinking method: Make it real

“Make it real” is a method through which a conceptual rough prototype is built with simple materials that are easy to manipulate. This method enables a way of thinking and designing through the physical construction of an idea. This allows visualization, which in turn aids the discussion among team members, the comprehension of the idea itself, and its further development. “Make it real” is about building and making the idea real whilst thinking. Tangibility can reveal much more than simple theory. It also helps to communicate and share the idea with others, in order to enrich and improve it. When the goal is to get impactful solutions, it is necessary to make them real, and not just abstract concepts.

How to:

1. Prepare the activity by providing the team with a Creative Box containing various materials to facilitate the production of prototypes and three-dimensional sketches.
2. Invite all the team members to a 15 minutes prototyping session to start building their ideas, using the material given. To prototype at best, it is important to keep an open and unprejudiced mindset.
3. Start building something, it doesn’t have to be perfect or complete. Just pick up a material that inspires you, modify it and imagine what it could represent and how it could be used to envision even just a part of the idea (A pen could turn into a magic wand, a straw with some coloured stickers could turn into a traffic light, etc.)
4. Try to represent the idea as complete as possible, indicating the people involved in the idea, the context, the tools and the key components that enable the project.
5. It's important to create and tell a story around it. This will increase the team’s involvement in the activity, creating a shared imaginative environment that allows easy visualization and envisioning of materials and objects as real components.
6. Strive for quantity, not for quality of ideas. Once the production phase is exhausted, group ideas into clusters, evaluating their potential and viability as a team.

Two interesting variations of the "Make it Real" method are:

• Prototype for empathy helps to understand needs and problems that users have when using a prototype. More info: Prototyping Empathy.
• Role playing is a type of prototype that helps to test an idea or experience by getting into character and acting it out. More info: Design Kit.

You can download the IDEActivity method cards from the Materials page, along with all the other Resources in the course.