As I was doing some prep work for my Facebook Q&A on Design Thinking next Monday, I came across the term, “Wizard of Oz Prototype.” I realized that we had done prototypes like this in the classroom, but didn’t know there was a term for them. As you know, the Wizard in that famous book and movie uses the art of illusion to appear much larger, louder, and smarter than he really is. When making a Wizard of Oz prototype to test out, you may want to find out if the end experience is going to be worth all of the work needed to create it. For example, you may want to design a robot that dispenses fortunes to people. Before spending time on programming a robot, you might dress up as a robot and present fortunes when someone presses a button to find out if this is a product people will like. So, it’s kind of a twist on “Fake it ’til you make it.” You can read more about it in this handout from Stanford’s d. school.
