# Life as a Prototype

Ever heard of "Life as a Prototype"? It's an idea I got from "Change by Design" by Tim Brown. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in design thinking, designer or not.

![](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1702267256042/90b97415-c443-443b-a29f-91b137a10a4e.png align="center")

### **What's 'Prototype' All About?**

What do we mean by "life as a prototype"? Think of a prototype in design. It's like a rough model you use to test out your ideas. Say you're creating a website - you might sketch it on paper and ask people to give it a try. Or if you're designing a mouse, you might carve one out of soap to get feedback. Prototyping helps us test our ideas and improve them based on real feedback.

### **The 3 Big Ideas**

If we look at our lives as prototypes, there are three big things to keep in mind:

1. **Iteration**: The idea here is to try something, get feedback, and then tweak it. The quicker we can do this, the better our results.
    
2. **Assumptions**: In design, we start with an educated guess or a hypothesis, then test it out. Prototyping is all about seeing if your best guess works in real life.
    
3. **Being Okay with Failure**: It's fine to mess up at first. Failure is part of the process of getting better.
    

### **Quick Learning Example: Life as a Prototype**

Imagine you're learning something new, like skateboarding or guitar. Instead of the usual way of taking a course for a month, what if you learned the basics and recorded a song in just a week, 48 hours, or even 24 hours? And it's totally fine if it's not perfect at first. Get feedback, learn, and improve.

### **Wrapping Up: Fail Fast, Learn Faster**

This whole "Life as a Prototype" thing is a reminder for me to accept failure and speed up learning. I hope you find this perspective as useful as I do!

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