During this week’s lectures we moved forward into the next step of the design process to pretotyping. Pretotyping provides a very rudimentary and simple display of a design idea. Pretotypes can be created using any common household items put together to represent a more sophisticated design. Pretotyping can also be a performance of an idea using people or objects to demonstrate a new idea for a business model or work flow. Whatever way it is created, a pretotype provides a tangible and real way to see and understand a design.

Pretotypes are crucial to help others understand a design idea, no matter how sophisticated it is. In my own senior design experience, I have started to learn how important it is to jump in and try ideas sooner rather than later in order to identify potential problems and flaws in any initial flaw. Failing is a very important part of the design process as it highlights issues that must be fixed and helps to improve any design. The quicker you fail, the quicker you can optimize your design and make it even better than what you had originally imagined. Rapidly making and modifying pretotypes also opens up opportunities that you had not initially realized or thought of which can also help make your design even better.

This week’s assignment asked us to select a design idea from the World Health Organization’s compendium of innovative health technologies for low-resource settings and create a pretotype for this design. It was interesting, as an outsider to the design, to try to understand the design and come up with a simple representation that best reflects the purpose and use of the design. Even in coming up with a pretotype for this design, I already had questions about the functionality and feasibility of certain features and on the ease of use for anyone to use it. It also made me think of what materials could and could not be used in the final design given what just the pretotype must be able to do.

I’m looking forward to continuing my exploration of this device throughout the final project!