Breakout MVP

I have been fortunate to attend design thinking workshops hosted by Future Design School. A couple times we hosted them at school to help kickstart our electives programs and inspire our teachers think about their curriculum from a design cycle point of view. The other time was with Les McBeth in London for GoogleEI.

I had great experiences at all of their workshops, though I would have liked to drill down in more specific ways around my change management goals. One of the big takeaways from FDS is when designing something, or anything really, don’t let the physical or mental big picture get in the way. Get to a point where you can show some sort of prototype to others (or just yourself) so you can hold it and experience it to encourage feedback.

To this end I decided to create a DIY Breakout box. I’ll write a bit more about my BreakoutEDU journey in a future post, however I want to show off what I built today:

This is my MVP: my Minimal Viable Product, or the bare minimum I could build as a proof of concept. I used scrap 1x4 and salvaged nails. The hasp is too long, there is a nail protruding into the interior, some sides are splitting and it’s definitely crooked but it works! I can now use this to demonstrate how students can solve a puzzle, get a 3-digit answer to unlock the padlock, and reveal whatever is inside. Another puzzle? Access to a new tool? Another box? Sure!