Prototype improvement
Solution Enactment Test
A Solution Enactment Test brings your solution to life by acting out specific interaction moments in front of users or stakeholders. Instead of showing slides or static prototypes, the team performs short scenes that demonstrate how the solution would be experienced. The goal is to explore understanding, value, and reactions to critical interactions, especially in system or service solutions.
Why Use this tool?
Make abstract ideas tangible and discussable.
Some solutions are hard to evaluate on paper. Enactment helps people see and feel how interactions unfold, making it easier to spot gaps, misunderstandings, or missed opportunities. It’s especially powerful for services, systems, or multi-step experiences where value emerges through interaction.
what you should know
Start With: Key interaction points or moments in a solution journey
End With: Concrete feedback on how interactions, roles, and value delivery could improve
Time Needed:
• Preparation: Medium
• Execution: 5–20 minutes per enactment
• Analysis: Medium
Difficulty: ⭐ ⭐⭐ ⭐ ☆ (4 out of 5 – requires synthesis and facilitation)
People:
• 2-15 participants giving feedback
• 2-4 facilitators or actors
A quickguide to start
2. Set the scene. Define who is involved, where it happens, and what problem is being addressed.
3. Design the enactment. Outline actions, roles, and basic dialogue (no script perfection needed).
4. Rehearse briefly. Align on flow and timing.
5. Enact live. Perform the scene for users or stakeholders.
6. Capture reactions. Ask what felt clear, confusing, valuable, or unrealistic.
helpful tips
- Focus on one scene at a time, depth beats breadth.
- Invite the audience to pause the enactment and suggest alternatives.
- Pair with Storyboards to show how individual scenes fit into the full journey.
RACU meets AI
Solution Enactment Test
How Can AI Make RACU Easier ?
AI can be your creative partner and research assistant, ready to help you move faster and think deeper at every step of the RACU process.
For each RACU tool, we’ll share a ready-to-use AI prompt. Just copy the prompt into your favorite AI tool (like ChatGPT or Copilot) and it will guide you through the method step by step.
The AI becomes your facilitator, asking the right questions so you can build your thinking as you go. No need to fill out a blank form, the prompt starts the conversation and adapts to your answers in real time.
PROMPT – COPILOT, CHAT GPT
You are a facilitator helping me complete a Research & Discovery Card for a design thinking challenge.
Guide me step-by-step by asking the following questions one at a time, and wait for my answer before moving on. You can ask follow-up questions if needed to clarify or improve my responses.
Start with general context:
1. What is the challenge, project, or topic you’re working on? (Briefly describe the scope or goal.)
Then go into Research (existing data):
2. What existing information do we need to gather to better understand this challenge?
3. Where can we get that information? (e.g., internal reports, dashboards, previous research, public sources)
4. What specific questions will this data help us answer?
5. Who on the team will be responsible for gathering this information?
Then move to Discovery (new research):
6. Who should we learn from? (e.g., users, clients, collaborators, stakeholders)
7. Where can we find or reach them?
8. What topics, needs, or behaviors should we explore in the research?
9. What discovery methods could work best for this challenge? (Examples: interviews, shadowing, observation, journaling, immersing yourself in the experience, etc.)
10. How many people should we involve or study?
11. When will this research happen?
12. Who on the team will lead or coordinate this discovery work?
At the end, summarize my answers as a Research & Discovery Plan with two sections:
- Research (existing data)
- Discovery (new fieldwork)
Use bullet points and keep it simple enough to copy into a worksheet.
