Show your work before it’s 'done'.
The main square of a city is full of chairs.
Maybe 1000. Maybe more.
Definitively more. 😅
Everyone’s waiting to watch a movie.
It’s Transilvania International Film Festival, in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
Before the projection starts, the director steps on the stage and says: (paraphrased)
“We made beyond human efforts to be able to show you this movie tonight.
But the movie is not done.
We still need to make changes to it.”
[proceeds to enumerate the stuff they still need to touch and perfect].
🤯
Now I REALLY want to see this movie.
If only for this guy’s courage to show something he, and probably everyone working in the movie industry, might label incomplete, not perfect, not done.
During the most prestigious film festival in Romania. Where EVERYONE in the industry gathers.
It takes ⚽️ 🏀🎾🏐🥎
It was great, I loved it.
No. I haven’t noticed anything wrong with the movie.
If anything, I paid more attention to it and watched it with more admiration.
I wasn’t ready to launch IRrEGULAR LEtTER.
I also don’t know what I was waiting for.
But this movie director and this movie, in its genuine, raw, unpolished form, reminded me why I started thinking about this newsletter in the first place: to create a space where there are no “shoulds” and no perfection.
Welcome to #1.
Show your work before it’s done.
It might inspire someone more than the “finished product” will ever be able to do.
How IRrEGULAR LEtTER came to be
It’s a long story, and the only way to tell is short is through the words of Yancey Strickler, found in their essay: How to build a newthing
Feelings towards the existence of a newthing
The beginning is not with an idea but with the feeling towards an idea. Something you feel but do not know. It makes you anxious and gives you somersaults inside if you try to explain.
If you ignore this feeling it will go away, finding another soul open to its directions.
If you pay too much attention it will also go away, being made nervous by such direct energy.
The right approach is to notice it, be curious about it, but not demand anything of it. Allow it to show you what it’s meant to be.
You can read more about it here. Thank you for choosing to be here with me. 💛
Prototyping is thinking through making. It is also experience design.
When I stand before any ‘start’ line, I cannot help but think of the ‘finish’ line.
Envisioning the finish line is a trap. It invites perfection to the party. Perfection is friends with doubt and fear. And we all know that none of them are fun to be around. 😅
Then, I look at all the time, energy, and effort between those lines.
It’s so much easier never to start.
I found that calling stuff “experiments” and “prototypes” helps me make first moves. First moves that feel like climbing Mount Everest. [Like me thinking about starting a newsletter for over one year…]
Prototypes wash the weight of perfection away.
They give us permission to start over as often as we want.
And to stay open to seeing what happens.
“Prototypes are about giving people something to authentically experience.”
—Gray Garmon, Prototyping: you’re halfway there
When we prototype, we create a realistic first version of our idea, and we bring it into the world for others to see, touch, and play with. The purpose is not to get the thing right. The purpose is to get the experience right.
Even if all we see is a bunch of cardboard.
Prototypes reveal assumptions and needs, help discover emotions, and observe reactions that would otherwise be inaccessible through dialogue. They’re a simpler version of a future reality that we get to experience in advance. Here’s a fun example from IDEO CoLab.
While we usually design experiments with or for others, experiments can also be used as personal learning projects, where learning happens in iterative cycles. They give us a taste of that experience and help us decide whether we want to invest in it more.
Something to inspire
1—SparkTruck
“We came up with the idea that maybe we can be this mobile-tinkering field trip that comes to you”—Eugene Korsunskiy, Co-Founder
SparkTruck is a big red truck filled with cutting-edge maker tools, and it goes from school to school, teaching kids about design thinking and hands-on learning. As the co-founders of the project, Jason Chua and Eugene Korsunskiy travel across the country making little vibrating robots, creature-launchers, and laser-cut stamps with the kids; they discover how the act of making and building can teach kids that they can make a real impact in the world.
2—Re:Make the Derby Museum of Making
“We quickly recognised our creative limitations and this re-enforced a growing belief that we should co-produce the museum”—Hannah Fox, Project Director, Museum of Making
The Re:Make project invited audiences to become co-producers and makers, co-designing and building the refurbished museum’s fixtures and fittings—a radical break with the usual sector approach of employing a designer and retaining control. The Museum of Making recruited ‘makers in-residence’ and commissioned them to facilitate co-design and co-making workshops for the public and members of staff.
Since 2012, more than 200 local people were involved in designing and making furniture, object displays and fittings. Making is now at the heart of the museum, which has three workshops offering creative and a mobile museum of making used to prototype ideas for schools and public programming.
Based on what they have learned throughout the years, the Derby Museum of Making team has developed a free Human-Centered Design Workflow Guide they are using to co-design and co-create projects with different stakeholders.
Learn more about prototyping:
Take a free four-week prototyping course from IDEO & Acumen+
Follow Scott Witthoft on Medium, where he explores the art of prototyping and hosts an inspiring Q&A series with amazing creators.
One free prototyping game you can use with your teams
DreamUp is a game that inspires creativity and collaboration. You will divide into two teams to discover new solutions to everyday problems by empathizing with others, imagining big ideas, and prototyping them to bring them to life.
Your team will work together through eight rounds of creative action and a ninth round of storytelling. At the end of the game, each team will give the other team awards that highlight their unique creative collaboration.
And if life design is what you’re after, I’ve got you!
We can design and prototype more than just things and stuff.
Bill Burnett from Stanford Life Design Lab takes you through a free process to help you design your so-called Odyssey Plan.
This process is perfect for those pondering “What’s next?”. It’s meant to help you visualize your future and run small prototypes and experiments to get you unstuck.
Well, that was that. 🪄✨
#1 is out and about, and I hope you’ve found something new here. Something that inspires you to show your work before it’s ‘done.’
Compared to my vision of the ‘finish’ line, this work is far from done. But I am showing it anyway. It’s a prototype. And I’d appreciate SO MUCH any thoughts or feedback you have to share. Or you can drop a comment to the post. Or pass by the community chat.
Sara, Elbert, Jessamine, Chantelle, Leo, Ana, Jonas, Veronika, and Dinye—You’ve discovered my double Easter Egg and all of you will be getting a hand-written letter from me these coming week(s), depending on where in the world you are. 🛫 💌
I’ll see you in two weeks. Until then, stay awesome! 😎
Anamaria
Yay! I loved this first edition! Congrats Anamaria and thank you for sharing your experience and knowledge on this new format!
Thank you for sharing your own courage to start sharing something before it’s done! It’s inspired me to finally devote time to starting this other something I’ve been meaning to do, too!