Unit 24 · The first prototype you can touch

Week 25 · 45 minutes · 10th and 11th grade · your project, alone or in a group · as we planned it.

What you’ll do

Last week you named someone outside your team who is going to use your project, and what they need, in their own words. Today your project gets its first version that person can touch: use, play, hear or go through without anyone explaining it. Not the whole project: the smallest part that’s useful to them.

What “the version you can touch” means depends on your project:

• a tool or an app: one screen, what the person taps and what they see next;
• a game: one playable turn;
• a song or a podcast: one minute of listening with something the person does;
• a story, an image or a video: one page or one sequence they go through on their own;
• a project that’s impossible today: depending on your route, the simulation with a control that moves, the closest step, taken, or the explanation someone can follow alone;
• a project without AI or about AI: the same, with your technique: on paper, with your voice, with objects or with a digital tool without AI.

If your project is at another stage and there’s nothing to touch yet, you do a short exercise: you draw on paper the moment of use —what the person receives, what they do, what happens next— and test it for three minutes with the next table.

Make it remember

If your version needs to keep something between one use and the next —a score, a preference, the state of a game, a character’s settings—, today your team decides what it saves and where:

• nothing: your version works without remembering, and that’s an answer too;
• a JSON file in your project’s repository: for things that change little, like rules or content, never anything personal;
• browser storage: for the preferences of whoever uses it, on their own device;
• a program database (for example, a Firebase collection): for things many people use or that need to last, with its security rules on before anyone uses it;
• a physical record, if your project has no digital form: a notebook, a board or cards in the folder that keep the state from one use to the next.

All of this applies just the same if your project is without AI: saving isn’t an AI thing.

If it saves something, your version says so in one visible line: “This version saves ___ for ___; it doesn’t save your name or anything that identifies you.” It never saves personal data from whoever uses it. A character can remember its settings, but it’s never built as a companion (Unit 12).

Advanced route. If your team decided its project will be an app you install on a computer, today you test it first on a program or classroom device. It’s never installed on someone else’s device without the owner’s permission, and it doesn’t change system settings unless whoever uses it confirms.

Why it’s worth it

This is the first version of your project that does something for another person. And there’s a trick that changes everything: if you draw it before asking for it, you know exactly what to demand from the machine, and you see right away where it didn’t listen to you.

How the session goes

• Anticipate. Without looking at anything, you say from memory what the person who will use your project needs. You see a worked example —the T-shirt fitting room— and where it failed. Your team writes on the board how many generations today’s work justifies. Then, phone face down, you draw your version by hand and write next to it, in words, what the person does and what happens next. On the card: “What we think will come out”. And your team decides what your version remembers, where it saves it, and writes the notice.
• Act. Before running your card, your team checks aloud that it carries no names, data, photos or voices of anyone. Digital projects take turns on the class device, and every generation is added up on the board. And a second attempt: you fix what the machine didn’t respect, or you change the drawing if you discovered something, and you add the memory you decided on, if any. You save it to your repository with a commit whose message your team writes.
• Reflect. Your drawing next to what came out, described aloud. Did what you anticipated come out? Did the instruction get better, or did the question get better? What did the AI decide here that a person should have decided?

No screens. From the drawing until your card is ready, phone face down, no computer, no AI: you draw, discuss with your team and decide what you’ll ask the machine for, what you’ll do by hand, and what your version remembers, where it saves it and with what notice. The drawing comes back later, next to whatever comes out.

If your project is without AI

You make the same version you can touch, with the same time and the same criteria, with your technique: sheets swapped by hand when someone “taps” a button, an object, a turn at the table, or a page or an app you build without AI. On the board you write your materials and time budget. You build your first attempt while the queue runs, put your drawing next to what you made in the listening, fix it in the second attempt and save the version to your repository or, if it isn’t digital, dated in your folder. In every listening, the question for you is: what did you decide, and why?

What the AI decides, and what you decide

At the end, you update the division of work on your card: what the AI did today, what you did and what you decided. Which part gets made first, how it looks and what stays is always decided by a person. If you work in a group, each person notes their part and their decision. And if you started from a piece in the library or from someone else’s work, you note it in the credits.

The criteria, as questions

• C1. Would the person outside your team know what to do with your version without anyone explaining it?
• C2. Does it solve one part of what the person needs, the one your card says? (In 11th: can you say why that part first?)
• C3. Does it work without asking for or saving any personal data from whoever uses it?

For inspiration

If your project has to do with sports: your tactics board or the shooting simulator. They’re starting points, not recipes. And if you want to prepare your instruction beforehand, use the assistant for creating.

On your way out, you write what you think the person will do when they use your version. Next week you find out.