Prototyping is a fundamental aspect of the design process, enabling students to explore, experiment, and refine their ideas through hands-on learning. However, in secondary education, students struggle to integrate prototyping effectively into their projects. A lack of technical skills, confidence, and experience leads to a theoretical approach to design, where making is seen as an afterthought rather than an integral part of the process.
This research investigates how prototyping can be made more accessible and engaging within the context of secondary education, specifically within the Technasium curriculum. Through literature research, interviews, surveys, and classroom experiments, the study identifies key barriers to effective prototyping and proposes solutions to enhance technical skill development and hands-on engagement. This approach is presented in a 5-pager for Technasium teachers. The 5-pager aims to help them to understand and implement this project and how to put more emphasis on prototyping in the O&O lesson.
Four student-centred solutions were developed and tested: NeXus, a tool station that tries to make it easier to start the making process. A Skill Workshop gives a structured introduction to basic building techniques. Instructional Posters, provide visual, step-by-step guidance for inspiration and independent learning. A Lo-Fi prototyping materials box lowers the threshold to start experimenting with prototypes. Additionally, a teacher-focused intervention offers advise for writing project assignments that emphasise hands-on iteration.
The findings indicate that by making prototyping more approachable and explicitly embedding it into the learning process, students become more confident, engaged, and effective in their design work and hands-on skills. The proposed solutions can help to achieve this.
This approach can be used to investigate further on how students can be motivated to develop practical skills.