We want to touch it

See these many buttons up there? We probably did the worst thing you can do about buttons: We printed them on paper.

Of course we also put them into our presentation, being the essence of our thesis, which explains its functionality by telling a little case scenario. But eventually this is not satisfying anymore. We want to click these buttons!

Or like Aza Raskin stated in our first lecture on Monday: The value of an idea is zero unless it can be communicated. And a great way of communicating is to make people touch it. Aza illustrated (well, not he himself actually) his credo by providing a nice little cartoon which led him and other participants to the conclusion: Prototypes are like the tits of software design.

Well. As we are virgins in terms of software design this really is a challenge. During the whole course of writing our thesis we were kind of sad about not having the possibilty to easily code a rudimental prototype. It is nice to sit together brainstorming and dreaming about a certain idea that you believe in. But it is nothing you can really touch. And when you cannot touch, it is hard to get others involved or simply get some feedback about your theoretical construct. It is okay that the outcome of three months’ work is “just” some mock-ups as we did know that prototyping would have gone beyond the limits of our study.

But hey, study is over! Now is the time to make it real. With the motivation from our first week  at #MozNewsLab we are now thinking about how to get Corrigo clickable.

We will certainly talk to the few coders we already know. At the same time we like the idea of a “maker space” where people can start hammering on sofware ideas. It is our job to inspire participation now. So if you want to share your tool box – we are happy to provide the work bench.