Here’s an interesting look at the use of prototyping and “agile” development in a field outside the realm of software: urban development. The project in question is the re-purposing of part of an intersection in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood, part of the City’s “pavement to parks” program.

I think it’s interesting to see the evolution and migration (or osmosis) of design principles from the software world into the real one. IDEO’s “design thinking” revolution is perhaps the most commonly cited example of a non-software process employing agile (not necessarily Agile) methodologies, but there are certainly many other examples out there, from Principle 5 of The Toyota Way to basic prototyping approaches used in industrial design more generally.

I love that the City of San Francisco has taken some of this to heart as well, and is flying under the political radar by “piloting” (“prototyping”) projects before actually rolling them out. I’m not sure if the City conducted any user research to see if there is any demand for the plaza (top-down management being a slight problem in government bureaucracies and all that), but I sure hope they conduct user research from here on out to figure out what kind of Castro Plaza, if any, we actually want.

I think I’ll float this idea by the team here at EchoUser to see if we can come up with some time to do some guerrilla research… Gavin Newsom, here we come!