Prototype.
Making a thing real enough that real people can react to it.
A working low-fidelity prototype, plus a one-page test plan with falsifiable criteria written before the test.
This is the week you stop talking about the idea and put it into matter.
A prototype is the act of taking your best idea from Week 03 and making something a real human can hold, click, walk through, taste, or react to. It is not the finished product. The finished product comes much later, if ever. The prototype is the smallest possible artifact that lets the world tell you whether your idea is right.
The standard is low fidelity, high signal. A paper sketch can be a prototype if it is real enough to elicit real reactions. A Figma click-through can be a prototype. A cardboard mockup can be a prototype. A Wizard-of-Oz simulation — where you pretend to be the system, by hand, in front of a real user — can be a prototype. A rehearsal of a service can be a prototype.
What disqualifies something from being a prototype is overbuilding. If you spend the whole week making it pretty, you will run out of time before the test, and you will be so attached to it that you cannot accept what the test shows you.
We share the rest with the people building this with us.
The full stage — the disciplines, the formation note, the reference essays, and the weekly deliverable — is part of the cohort experience. Tell us where you fit and we'll send you the rest.