Building quick, rough versions of an idea to test with people or materials, and learning from what fails.
Key thinkers: Marion Buchenau, Stephanie Houde, Charles Hill
The longer story
Prototyping produces knowledge through making. Build something fast, see what happens, learn, iterate. The prototype isn't the goal; learning from it is. Works for design research, technological development, creative practice—anywhere you can make things to test ideas. Fail early, fail cheap. Each prototype answers questions and raises new ones. The documentation isn't just the artefact but the design rationale, what you expected, what you found, what you changed. Learning through doing, systematically.