Engineers love testing. That’s because they love things that work according to plan. If you let an engineer do what she thinks best in any design, she will triple dimensions, choose unnecessarily expensive (but light, strong and maintenance free) materials and build in all kinds of tricks just in case the overly reliable thing isn’t reliable enough already. And then test and gloat. Of course, they’re in a constant fight with the financial department, because obviously from the engineer’s point of view you can have it either good or cheap, not both.

The thing about testing: we don’t design and build a whole machine or factory and then put it to trial, we experiment all the time. Parts get tested, energy or material flows get simulated, dimensions are checked. Not just in the end, but in all stages of our design process. It resembles trial and error: constantly making adjustments and seeing if they work. But unlike trial and error, engineers think before they try. At least, most of the time. And we learn from our mistakes. That’s why we document them.

Rule of thumb

To my delight, design thinking has been discovered as a useful tool in other fields as well. But as popular as the creative thinking part is, as unpopular is the testing aspect. It seems to be a matter of mentality: where the focus is on perfection (and who doesn’t appreciate that in, for example, the medical field) it seems weird to start evaluating when things are far from perfect yet. But as a result so many opportunities for improvement are wasted! Safety first is a perfectly fine rule of thumb, but in design, it is inevitable to test products and procedures that aren’t finished, look a little sketchy, feel a bit wobbly. A prototype is not the real thing, it is good enough to be evaluated but as cheap as possible. And it is made for a specific purpose: if the looks of a design need to be assessed, a prototype might look perfect but don’t work at all, and if a mechanism needs to be proofed it’s looks are neglected as long as the mechanism is reliable. This approach prevents major expenses on ideas that haven’t got enough potential to become successful. So if you want to innovate, you’ll have to test. (Side note: “tryability” is even one of the success factors for consumer products; if consumers can try out a product themselves without too much expenses or effort, chances of success are higher.)

End user

So here’s my advice. In any design process, whether you design buildings, software, medical procedures, legislation etcetera, build in moments to evaluate your ideas. If possible: bring in the end user. Think of any aspects you want to have more information on, and design your evaluation procedure and your prototype accordingly. Spend your time and money wisely: it is smarter to test often in the earlier stages of the design process than to wait for the product to be finished and only evaluate that, no matter how elaborate the tests you can run when everything is perfect.

That’s the paradox: chances of your design being perfect are higher when you don’t wait for it to be perfect to test it! O and please have a bit of fun, even, or especially, when things don’t work out the way they were planned. Realize you have spared yourself from future embarrassment and improve your ideas using the test results. Testing is a creative step in its own right, it is time it gets some positive press!