The Prototype Sucks

For the first few years of designing and making furniture, I was often frustrated. The learning curve is steep, costly mistakes are made regularly, and my design tastes far exceeded my making abilities. But the first step was the most frustrating. 

I would start by sketching a bunch of designs based on what I wanted to make: a coffee table, side table, lamp etc. I would then refine the design I liked most, and sometimes use 3D software (poorly) to ensure I got the scale right. When I was happy with the design and dimensions I would then start making. 

When the design came to life, 9 times out of out of 10 I was disappointed. The prototype sucked. 

It wasn’t that the overall design itself was always bad (although sometimes it was), it was more so that it didn’t meet my expectations. It didn’t look how I thought it would look, or should look. The angles were off slightly, the wood should have been thicker, I shouldn’t have curved that edge. It could have been a number of things, but it was only in seeing it fully conceived that I could see the issues. The time spent designing, refining, and building, combined with the cost of materials used, led to a very disappointing scenario. 

In this state of mild despair there would inevitably be questions arising in my mind about my designing/making abilities, knocking my level of self belief down a few notches. When this eventually passed and I became less disgruntled I’d either scrap the design entirely, or begrudgingly remake it with the required modifications, all the while ruing the fact that I was wasting time and money having to remake it.

The whole process was pretty demoralizing. But then I began to finally figure it out. The prototype sucks, so expect it to suck. It won’t be the ideal final product after making it just once. It may take 2, 3 or 4 times. It will cost more and take longer. And in this realization was the fact that all those feelings of frustration and negativity could be erased with a mental shift before beginning the process. Expect that it won’t be right the first or even second time. It may sound like an obvious solution, and I’m sure for most people they already would have figured this out, but designing and making a piece with the expectation that it will absolutely require amendments to get the right result has truly helped my designing/making process. 

I recently heard about a design process that is defined by 4 stages: think, make, break, repeat. It is used in all areas of design, with the idea being that you need to get to the repeat stage quickly, to be able to rethink the design based on what didn’t work the first time. Once made, it is to be ‘broken’. The design should be challenged, so that it can be made again, improving each time. 

I wish I’d known about this concept when I first set out on my journey to design and make furniture, so hopefully this post will reach someone at the start of their journey and figure it out a lot quicker than I did.

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Mark