#5 - Provoke progress

If a picture is worth a 1000 words, then a prototype has the potential to be worth a novel. But as a tool, prototypes often get misused and misunderstood. They turn from valuable instruments of discovery into performances of appeasement.

I learnt this when I was working with a designer who shared a prototype that was so raw it made me uncomfortable. It was abstract, contradictory, and unfinished. The delivery? Messy. And within minutes one of the senior business leaders voiced strong disagreement: "That's not at all how this needs to work!"

What followed was one of the most intense group discussions I’ve ever seen. Feedback flew. People clashed, connected dots, changed their minds. They cared. And when the dust settled, there was clarity. The meeting hadn’t derailed the project. It had revealed it.

When we debriefed, I asked him how he pulled it off. He said it like it was obvious: “It’s not a prototype. It’s a provocation. I build it to make them react.” That struck me. Until then, I’d been prototyping for consensus. For comfort. I was trying to be right. He was trying to find the truth.

A good prototype doesn’t aim to be right. It aims to stress ideas. To provoke progress in the messy creative journey toward value. Polished prototypes that seek stakeholder buy-in typically invite shallow feedback. The opportunity for learning collapses. They don’t fail because they’re wrong. They fail because they’re polite.

So stop building prototypes. Start making provocations, raw enough to invite real feedback. Because progress is provoked by those who are prepared to be wrong in public. Humble enough to share what's unfinished. And curious enough to be changed by what comes back.