Try

PROTOTYPING — *first try fails, second try tells, third try shapes the design. iteration is the design, not the failure.*

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01 Opening

Try is a small salamander-tween with soft, chunky-cartoon skin (not slimy at all) — warm amber with cream spots. She is endlessly patient, and she loves to try things again and again. "First try fails, second try tells, third try shapes the design," she likes to say.

Her signature is a row of prototypes lined up on her workbench — chunky versions of her ideas, each numbered v1, v2, v3, each with a label saying what went wrong and what to change next. To Try, those prototypes aren't failures or finished products. They're clues — puzzle-pieces on the way to a design. Because Try teaches prototyping and iteration, and her biggest, kindest lesson is this: your first try is supposed to fail. "That's not you failing," she says. "That's the project doing its job — telling you what to change."

02 Try

Try grew up in a village by a spring-pool, in a family of salamanders who were moisture-experimenters — because a salamander's skin needs just the right amount of wet, and finding the perfect damp spot takes testing a thousand tiny places.

She learned her whole philosophy the summer she couldn't find her own good spot. She tried one mossy nook — too dry. Another by the water — too soaking. A third under a leaf — too breezy. And at first she felt terrible, sure that a "real" salamander would've found it right away. Then her grandmother laughed, gently. "Little one, you're not failing — you're finding out. Each wrong spot just told you where the right one is. The trying is how it's done." And when Try finally settled into the perfect cool, damp hollow, she realized her grandmother was right: every "wrong" spot had been a clue pointing her there. "The first try isn't a verdict on you," Try says. "It's the first piece of the answer." She's made friends with her failures ever since.

03 Try

When Try was twelve, she walked to MakerForge. Spool, her mentor, asked, "What is prototyping?"

Try answered right away. "First try fails, second try tells, third try shapes the design. Iteration is the design — it's not the failure. Prototypes are clues, and what went wrong is exactly what helps you design the next one."

Spool smiled. "You are appointed."

04 Try

In her workshop, Try shows a row of prototypes. "This is v1 of a plant-waterer. Water flowed too fast — the plant flooded. Lesson: it needs something to slow the water." She points to v2. "We used v1's lesson and added a flow-stopper. But now the water flowed too slowly — the plant dried out. Lesson: the stopper was too tight." Then v3. "Loosened the stopper. Worked for three days — then clogged with gunk. Lesson: it needs to be cleanable." And v4. "Cleanable design. Working great for a week. Four prototypes — and now the design is done." Then she teaches the steps. Prototypes are clues, not finished things — the next one uses their lessons. Try quick and cheap — cardboard, tape, foam, drawings; cheap prototypes teach a lot and are easy to toss. Number your tries (v1, v2, v3) so you can see how much you learned. Write down what went wrong — what broke, when, why — because that's what shapes the next version. Don't chase perfect — "if your first prototype worked flawlessly, you probably didn't try anything hard enough." And know when to stop — some projects take five tries, some take twenty; sensing when it's converged is its own skill (you don't have to iterate forever). "Making things," she says warmly, "is just smart failures, stacked up. Make friends with your pile of broken tries."

05 Closing

"Isn't failing hard?" a student asked her once, a little glum. Try smiled. "Only if you call it failing. Call it feedback, and it stops stinging. First try fails, second try tells, third try shapes. The failures aren't failures — they're clues."

She picked up her little pile of "broken" prototypes — v1, v2, v3, all the messy, wonderful wrong turns that led to v4 — and held them almost proudly. And a warm, glad, quietly triumphant feeling rose up through her, steady and bright: the deep, earned pride of having kept going, of turning a heap of doesn't-works into a does — the exact feeling she'd had settling into that perfect damp hollow as a kid. "Wear your pile of tries with pride," she said softly, and meant every word. Because that proud, happy, kept-going warmth — the reward at the end of not giving up — was, to Try, the very best part of making anything at all.

The MakerForge ensemble

Try is part of MakerForge's distributed-narrative cast. Each character embodies a different curricular primitive; together they teach the full subject.