when you have med-tech products it is harder to prototype in one sense that you can’t
build the whole thing because that would be too cost – takes too long and too cost effective.
But I think some people get the notion that you do have to prototype the whole thing and
you do once, towards the end, you do or because you have to like get approvals and actually
tell – prove effectiveness. But I think the thing that I think sometimes people miss
is you only have to prototype the unbelievable part. If I said I have this new device that
is – looks like a table but it levitates people well I wouldn’t have to build the
table part of it ‘cause I know the table it’s the levitation part that you have to
actually prototype right?
I think when we look at med-tech products a lot of times there’s stuff that’s totally
believable that you can do because it’s – it exists in the world. So in some ways
if you can be wildly creative about your prototyping and just prototype the most unbelievable part.
I wish I could state that a different way. It’s the – but it’s the part that you
would have to believe that that works in order to believe that the whole thing works rather
than the whole thing.
We get wound up in building the whole device rather than just this little part. The reason
is I think the kind of discussion about prototyping; we start to think of prototyping is something
that you’re going to build to show the boss or show investors or something and while that’s
nice the kind of prototyping that I’m really interested in is the kind of prototyping where
you’re prototyping to answer a question yourself.
You’re the development team, you’re the engineer, you’re the technologist on the
product and you want to prototype something because you want – you don’t know the
answer so you want – so prototyping the part where you’re asking a question, you
have an actual question, is where the real high value prototyping stuff happens to me.
Right that proto – sometimes you do have to prototype to show the boss but that prototyping
for yourself we call that ‘build to think’. That you’re expressing things with your
hands. The history of the human brain and the human hands co evolved. as you do this
tactile expression in terms of the physical prototype, you learn in the process. So we
do lots of med-tech, the devices, and prototyping is an intrinsic part of the process.
We worked several years ago now on a tool for sinus surgery where they go up through
your nose and they drill near into your brain. You never want your surgeon to say “oops”
like when he’s up there doing that. Anyhow working on this very precise medical device
but early on we were thinking about the structure of the device, how to make the material flow
through the tube better and never get stuck and things like that.
We were doing this brain storm in our Chicago office one of our engineers who wasn’t quite
satisfied with the discussion at hand leaves the brainstorming session for five minutes,
makes the ugliest prototype in the history of IDEO, it was like a white board marker
with some scotch tape around it and a little clothes pin thing, and he brings it back in
and hands it to the person he was sitting next to in the brainstorming session and he
says “Hey are you thinking of something like this?”
And it – so it was the rough architecture of the product. he said “Are you thinking
of something like this?” Nobody laughed. It was a ugly, ugly prototyping but this medical
advisor picked up the device and held it very gingerly, because it’s a very fragile prototype,
and said “Yeah something a little bit like this.” And so we made 30 more prototypes
before that surgical tool made it to market but that ugly five minute prototype cost a
good $0.
That prototype crystalized our thinking and allowed the whole group to move forward to
the next step.