Prototyping 101: Make Ideas Real, Learn Fast, Stay Open

​Prototyping isn’t about building the perfect solution. It’s about bringing ideas to life early, making them tangible, and using them to learn, listen, and adjust. In this 90-minute Prototyping 101, you’ll discover how to use prototyping as a mindset and a method, a way to test thinking, engage others, and move forward without having everything figured out.

This isn’t just about products. It’s about prototyping conversations, services, systems, behaviors, and experiences—at any stage of a process. And it’s especially about how prototyping, when done with empathy and openness, can spark rich dialogue, create alignment, and help you learn what really matters.

What You’ll Learn

• ​The Real Purpose of Prototyping
  It’s not about validating ideas—it’s about learning and starting new conversations.
  
  Discover how prototypes invite feedback and open up thinking.
  

• ​Prototyping at Different Stages
  Use prototyping to explore early ideas, test assumptions, and support implementation.
  
  Learn the difference between low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes, and when to use them.
  

• ​Prototyping as a Mindset
  Adopt a way of working that embraces uncertainty, vulnerability, and iteration.
  
  Develop habits that support failing forward, continuous learning, and emotional resilience.
  

• ​Practical Prototyping Tools & Formats
  Sketches, storyboards, service roleplays, mock interfaces, paper apps, get introduced to tools that work for any context.
  

• ​Prototyping & Empathic Listening
  Learn how to use prototyping to generate dialogue with users and stakeholders, not just collect feedback, but truly understand needs.
  

• ​How AI Can Help
  Use AI to brainstorm prototype formats, create quick mockups, write scenarios, and ask critical “what if” questions that challenge your ideas.

​How It Works

• ​Pre-Session Brief
  You’ll receive a short worksheet to reflect on a challenge or idea you want to prototype. This helps you enter the session ready to build and learn.
  

• ​90-Minute Live Session (Online)
  We’ll work through the core concepts of prototyping, try out lightweight methods, and reflect on how to use this mindset in your everyday work.
  

• ​Templates & Tools
  You’ll receive simple templates for prototyping and iterating ideas, plus inspiration for what to prototype, and how.
  

• ​Community Access
  After the session, you’ll join our Future Skills Academy community for follow-up questions, shared stories, and support from coaches and peers.

​Who It’s For

• ​Designers, facilitators, intrapreneurs, and changemakers

• ​People launching new products, services, or systems

• ​Anyone wanting to work more creatively, courageously, and iteratively

​Why It Matters

Prototyping is a way of being in progress—a posture of learning, listening, and letting go of perfection. In a world where uncertainty is the norm, prototyping helps you move forward with curiosity, humility, and creativity.

Join us for Prototyping 101, and start shaping your ideas—by making them real, fast.