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Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I explore the role of errors and mistakes in learning through prototyping, as captured by the stories of engineering students, mobile phone apprentice-repairers and the digitally-inclined youth of Lomé's 'makerspaces' in their quest to put ideas to materiality as they imagine them.

Paper long abstract:

Prototyping is an in-vogue concept in Lomé’s makerspaces, as influenced by the globalised Euro-American Maker Movement that promote them. Toying with 3D printers and modelling software, Lomé’s digitally-inclined youth test their ideas through prototyping in makerspaces such as Ecotec Lab and WoeLab, which provide prototyping workshops and materials for students to use outside of their theoretically-oriented schools and universities. For the prototyping workshop facilitators, prototyping is a way to translate ideas to materiality and learn by making mistakes (l’apprentissage par l’erreur). But learning through mistakes is not only confined to the Euro-American influenced ‘makers’ of Lomé, they can also be seen in various forms of apprenticeships, such as with the mobile phone repairers in Lomé’s mobile phone market Dékon.

In this paper, I explore the role of errors and mistakes in learning through prototyping. Through stories of engineering students building elevator prototypes, mobile phone apprentice-repairers dismantling and reassembling broken phones, and kids building prototype gyroscopes as part of their summer workshop experience, I illustrate how errors and mistakes can be essential to solidifying an idea to its material form and are often more encouraged and celebrated instead of being met with frustration. Additionally, I argue that the malleability of the prototype as an unfinished product, as a figure of ‘compossibility’ (Corsín Jiménez 2014), allows for the students, apprentices and makers to explore the full potential of their ideas and enhance their skills, as they make and remake prototypes according to how they imagine them.