Prototyping Q&A with Eric Parker

This extended question-and-answer content comes from an on-going experiment I started while writing a recent book about prototyping. That experiment involved asking the same specific questions about prototyping of people I know or know of, admire, wondered about, and otherwise respect. Both then and now I’m trying understand what prototypes and prototyping mean to design professionals and a wider orbit of people beyond the practice.

A few notes about Eric:
Eric Parker is a professional architect, a community organizer, and entrepreneur. His most recent work has been creating physical space and programmatic content for entrepreneurs at the clubhou.se in Augusta; and building financial infrastructure to support underrepresented and disadvantaged populations in becoming entrepreneurs themselves through Make Startups. His work connects to so many moments of innovation from earliest idea to institutional development & implementation. I am grateful to him for sharing his perspectives.

“Prototype” has a literal definition and has lots of implications — what do you think it communicates well? Where is it a total miss?

Eric Parker: If you break the word down, it’s an entirely accurate way to express a first or early attempt. Over time though, it feels like expectations around prototypes have advanced to a level that hinders experimentation around new ideas and solutions. I find in my own work that people today expect a level of craft around prototypes that my very initial work has become primarily for myself and a few key trusted people around me. In fact, I would argue that most prototypes we see in public are probably at version 2 or 3 of refining the core idea.

How does prototyping show up differently in your personal versus professional life? (… or your recreational life or experimental life?)

EP: My professional life is centered around constantly iterative prototyping towards something that is as close to perfect as possible. As an architect, we were trained to lay out broad conceptual gestures and incrementally ‘work up’ to more and more detail.

Conceptual Design > Schematic Design > Design Development > Contract Drawings

Over the last 10 years in nonprofit development, I’ve followed a similar process that’s broken up more like:

Concept > Pitch > Adapt > Pilot > Measure > Document > Repeat

I think that because my professional life is spent so actively ‘doing’ these things, most of my personal time is spent more in the ‘being’ space; swimming, walking, cooking, gardening. I think all my best ideas come to me in the garden.

Thinking of a recent project in which intentionally you used a prototype — whether a challenge or a breeze — what were ways you knew if the prototype was going well or poorly?

EP: I’m currently about 3 years into iteration for an effort called Make Startups. The core idea is that we can use a training and assessment model to help financial institutions automate access to capital for disadvantaged entrepreneurs, and that this model will allow entrepreneur support organizations across the country to receive support from America’s workforce development system.

The initial pitch made total sense. We received grants to prototype solutions in Colorado and Georgia. In testing, we quickly discovered that at a macro level, financial institutions and state governments understood the challenge and were receptive to the solution. The real difficulty became translating the work at a local level. At the local level, conceptual momentum met administrative barriers. We found that, while the workforce system allows entrepreneurial skills training, performance metrics within the system are geared towards job placement in existing industries. We fought against the obvious roadblocks for 9 months because unfortunately we had our own grant metrics that relied on the prototype’s success.

This led to developing policy papers and working in DC to advocate for amendments to legislation and a three year Department of Labor study to inform appropriate performance metrics for entrepreneurship. Over the course of this, I’ve lost count of the number of prototypes around the experiences of entrepreneurs, support organizations, financial institutions, and policy makers. I just know that adhering to a vision and having constant tactical flexibility informed by measuring the success of prototypes is what has taken me from:

Architect > Hackerspace Founder > Nonprofit Leader > Policy Advocate > ?

What’s a go-to prototyping tool you use most regularly? (Please feel easy interpreting “tool” loosely — object, state of mind, constraint, whatever…)

EP: It’s really two things, a deep understanding of a problem and the people involved, and time off.

What’s missing from the discussion of prototyping?

EP: Just because a prototype doesn’t work, it doesn’t mean the idea that led to it is wrong. In this, I’m referring to the big ‘I’ Idea underneath it all vs the little ‘i’ idea that you are testing. When we have a vision of how the world can be, I think we actually see a world that is, that others just don’t see yet. We’re literally helping others see a reality that challenges their own reality. Of course we’re going to have prototypes fail when we try to convince everyone else in the world that some fundamental notion they have is wrong. The only way we fail in realizing the big Idea is by giving up after a prototype doesn’t work as expected.

What’s a change in how you think of prototyping *now* contrasted to how you may have thought/acted in the past?

EP: Prototypes can be formless in a euclidean sense. They are an expression of an idea with the intent of receiving feedback. There ultimately is no difference between sharing a sketch of a building and telling a joke on open mic night. They both involve the confidence vulnerability of sharing an idea in order to hone it to a point where it can resonate broadly and allow the world to see something in the same way that you do. I’m SO much more comfortable with failure now than I was early in my career.

It’s conformity vs the future. The real question is whether you have a prototyping mind.

Learn more about Eric and his work at the clubhou.se, Make Startups, and CONima Architects.

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Buy the book, This Is a Prototype, here.