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#<div style="text-align:justify;">invest time and resources on a solution that will be well received by students, faculty and administrators and that will have real impact. What appears like a great solution in your mind might not work at all in practice, while an idea that didn't seem that good might turn into a success. The faster you test your idea with the people involved, the earlier you will know if you are on the right path. But if you ask people what they think about an abstract idea, all you are going to get are opinions. Very often others might not understand your idea (this is especially true when we talk about novel ideas). This is where prototyping adds great value. If you can make it easier for people to experience or at least visualize or imagine what your idea is about, you will get more usable feedback. And this feedback is key in order to understand what aspects of your idea work well and which need improvement. Even more importantly, you may discover that there is a more interesting problem than the one you set out to address.</div><br>
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To help you do this, we invite you to put in practice the ideation and prototyping mindsets we explored in Session 2 1 (Design Thinking). Each teammate should prototype one project. By the end of the session, you should have four to five UIF projects outlined that have the potential to improve the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem at your institution.</div><br><br>
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Let's look back at this segment from the ''Extreme By Design'' documentary you watched in Session 21, which shows a student team working on the field in Indonesia.<br><br>
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Here are key takeaway from the video that are important to keep in mind as you grow in your role of change agent:
*'''Your initial assumptions or inferences about the needs of the stakeholders might not have been accurate.'''
:During the problem definition stage, we make inferences about the thoughts, feelings and needs of the stakeholders. Then we brainstorm some solutions for those needs. It's at the stage of testing rapid prototypes of those solutions that we learn whether those inferences were correct. Testing with an open mind and listening to the feedback (asking why, both to the tester and to ourselves) will allow us to learn more about the real needs of the stakeholders and come closer to an impactful solution.<br>
As pointed out in Session 21, defining the problem is one of the most challenging parts of the process, and it's imperative that you keep coming back to it, reflecting on whether it actually captures real needs -- explicit or implicit -- of your stakeholders. Sometimes the revision will be a minor change, sometimes it will be a radical redirection.
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For this deliverable to be considered completed in full, use the Prototyping section at the top of Session 4 in the Training Mural. <br>
* Come up with '''multiple ideas for solutions for each of the 5 problems (opportunities) you identified''' as part of your Landscape Canvas synthesis. Creativity thrives under constraints, so set a 15-20 minute timer for each problem, and come up with as many ideas as you can in that time. You can do this individually but it's much better if you do it as a group and build on each other's ideas (it's key to suspend judgment about what is a good idea and write down ALL ideas - watch this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1h5L_0rFz8 short video] with tips on group brainstorming). If you are not part of a Leadership Circle, you may invite friends/classmates to join you on the brainstorming session.
* '''Each person in your team should select an idea''' they are excited about and create a prototype for it. As mentioned in Session 2 1 (Design Thinking), there are different ways to prototype your idea depending on what that idea is. It could be a poster for a workshop that includes a link for students to sign up (so that you can assess interest and ask a question about why they are interested) or a draft of a syllabus. In sum, a prototype is anything that makes your idea tangible, allowing you to develop it from its abstract form to a more concrete one, and engage relevant people. Review different prototyping techniques in the TOOLKIT: Prototype and Test, and if you want to discuss with peers and mentors how you might prototype your selected ideas, go to the "Prototype to Learn" discussion thread in the session.
* '''Test the prototype''' with the relevant people -- students, faculty, etc., depending on what it is (see below some things to keep in mind as you test). Remember when you had to go out and interview someone on the first week of the challenge? Testing your prototype is similar to that: you might feel apprehensive about showing a prototype that doesn't look very polished to someone else, and that's understandable. Use some of the same strategies you used to set up your interview: introduce yourself and the project, establish a rapport with the other person, encourage him/her to be candid with you, and demonstrate you really care about what he/she says. You will find that people will be incredibly helpful, even flattered that you care about their perspective.
* '''Iterate'''. Based on what you learned about the problem or the solution, you might make a minor modification, learn that you are solving the wrong problem or make large changes in your strategy for how you solve the problem. Incorporate your learnings into creating a new prototype and test once again with the same person or different ones.