xdiscipline Thoughts across disciplines by Engin Erdoğan

Last night, I was thinking about how I would explain the phases of prototyping as I experience them and I did a very quick sketch (below). The diagram is not very pretty but well enough to make my point. I guess this should be one of the principles of prototyping: pretty enough to communicate the point.

Obviously, it is no surprise that the number of ideas decrease and the resolution of the prototypes  increase as one goes through these steps.

Here are some more thoughts on the steps:

Illustrating the idea
These are mostly low-res sketches that explain the core concept. They are products of brainstorms, individual sessions, or random trains of thought. When I sketch, I focus on the core of the idea and do not think too much about details and secondary uses. Such sketches help me ask whether the idea is relevant to what I am trying to accomplish and worth the investment. And of course, whether it brings something new and exciting to the table. Depending on the complexity of the idea, these sketches are useful for getting immediate feedback from people.

Demonstrating user value
This is where I put ideas in context and demonstrate value for potential users. At this phase, I usually think of linear sequences at first, like a story/narrative and how the idea fits in, how it meets a specific need. I try not to think about the specifics of the technology unless there is a big issue with the infrastructure. Prototypes at this stage do a better job than basic illustrations especially when the complexity is high or anticipated use situations are unconventional.

Simulating functionality
Simulations vary from canned interactive prototypes to working systems that are close to the actual. These types of prototypes are best for usability tests (and self satisfaction) and can reveal a great deal of information that enlighten the path to implementation. I try not to spend too much time on close-to-actual prototypes unless I am convinced about the value of the idea since this is pretty detailed work and consumes a lot of time.

So. Illustrate-demonstrate-simulate. Nice rhyme.

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A stock’s detail page in Meta-Markets

Meta-Markets is an experiment on which I have been collaborating with my two close friends, Burak Arıkan and Cenk Dölek. Burak, the ultimate prototyper, single-handedly put the core together with his endless energy and spent by far the most effort on it. Cenk, the perfectionist, has created the interactive graphs for stocks and is tying lots of loose ends together to make things work at their best.

One of our aims with this project is to explore the value of online immaterial labor through leveraging the mechanics of stock markets. We have questions. How can we ascribe value to the creative work that people put in to exist - express themselves and connect to others - in online environments? Can we approach these efforts as products? If these products are one’s intellectual property, can owners offer their products to public for raising capital and to make better products?

Market activity in the last 48 hours

To explain things in a more practical way: In NYSE or NASDAQ people trade shares of companies. In Meta-Markets people trade shares of bookmarks, profiles, videos, or blogs. Just like companies, socially networked products have ever growing values. When product owners issue their shares in Meta-Markets, they raise capital – today play capital, but tomorrow real capital.

Currently, we have markets based on product categories such as blogs, photos, etc. And we selected pilot services for these product categories based on the accessibility of their APIs. In the end, Facebook, Flickr, Delicious, and Feedburner became our initial set. Obviously, these services are represantative of their respective categories and we are planning to introduce more than one service in each category as long as we have access to their APIs.

4 markets active, more to come

Our experiment is still in its early stages. In tech speak, we are in private alpha. We are dealing with everything from server load to semantics on a daily basis. Our user base, which started with friends and friends-of-friends, is now extending to a variety of curious, ambitious, and tolerant people. Hopefully pretty soon, we will come to a stable enough state when we can open up the membership to all creative souls.

If you would like to keep an eye on what’s happening in Meta-Markets, check out our development journal.

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