Protobot

Step 1

Introduction

Molly Clare Wilson says that her Protobot tool was inspired by a book of games used by the Surrealists Artists in the 1920s.

The games helped artists in their generation. The exercises often involve juxtaposing things that often don’t naturally fit together. Part of the rationale of the game is that we are forced to follow a nonsense path far longer than is often comfortable.

This is a great activity to undertake individually or in groups. It can help bring energy to a workshop or spark your creative juices before a problem solving activity.

The Protobot site has over 47,000 product ideas at your fingertips. As Wilson says… “Some are brilliant. Some are bizarre. Some are controversial. Some are hilarious”.

Step 2

Head over to the Protobot website.

Once on the site, click on Randomize and discover your challenge. The site generates a product idea by matching a random product category with a random constraint.

Step 3

We recommend you spend 5 minutes individually or in a team coming up with as many ideas as possible.

Don’t filter yourself or others.

Go for Quantity over quality.

Step 4

Select one of your ideas to work on.

You can sketch your idea or you could storyboard how one of the ideas would work, or write a quick profile of a person who would use the idea.

Step 5

If you feel like getting truly faithful to the name of the site, why not grab some simple materials from around your home or office and build the idea as a simple physical prototype!

Step 6

Presentations

Invite each group to come up and deliver a two minute presentation of their prototype.

Each presentation should cover:

- The starting point
- The overall concept (briefly)
- How the prototype will work

If time allows, after each presentation, invite other groups to build on the concept, with "yes, and..." suggestions for how it could be further developed.

Step 7

Wrap-up

After all the presentations bring the whole group back together. Invite participants to reflect individually for five minutes on the following questions:

- How was this experience overall?
- What was challenging? What was energizing?
- What useful insights can I take from this experience?
- How could I apply learning from this experience in my daily work?

After participants have reflected individually, invite them to share reflections in the larger group.

Close the session.