Unfolding the future: Prototypes as epistemic objects in innovation and collaboration work

Prototypes are objects that approximate the features of a product or service. In design practice, prototypes are known as objects that can facilitate collaboration across heterogeneous groups, thereby instantiating changes that can foster innovation. Powerful as this function may be, the focus on prototypes’ boundary properties has obscured their own endemic dynamism as objects, making it difficult to capture the ongoing dynamic of prototypes within the practices that they mediate. We use the notion of epistemic objects to capture how prototypes highlight what is absent, raise questions, and unfold indefinitely over time. Drawing on participant observation and interview data from a 6-week university invention accelerator, we show that prototypes mediate collaboration practices as well as unfold dynamically over time. Our conceptualization of prototypes as epistemic objects captures both the nature and function of artifacts as they facilitate dynamic practices