As one of the 50 largest independent foundations in the United States, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation follows a clear philanthropic mission — to foster informed and engaged communities by investing in journalism, communities and the arts. In 2012, Knight Foundation launched the Prototype Fund to help technologists, journalists and “tinkerers of all kinds” through early-stage grants of $35,000 each to build and test new ideas, over six months, that could push media and civic information projects forward. During the first year, the program encouraged Prototype Fund award recipients to use human-centered design to better understand the needs and preferences of people who might use their product or service. Starting with the second year, Knight made human-centered design a formal part of the program. The goal was simple — to equip grantees with an effective toolset for developing innovative products and services that people would really use.

Chris Barr, Knight director of technology innovation who leads the Prototype Fund, explored ways to bring human-centered design into the program. He’d read about the LUMA System on a design industry blog, and signed up for a Fundamentals workshop to see the system for himself. The practical and flexible approach felt like a fit. Barr worked with LUMA to design a 2 ½-day workshop that gave each new cohort of Prototype Fund grantees training in the LUMA System, plus LUMA resources. With quarterly cohorts of about 20 projects each, the Prototype Fund soon had dozens of projects in progress. “After the workshops, I would get phone calls regularly like this: ‘We’ve really started to dig into these methods and it turns out that we were going to make the wrong thing. So now we have plans for something different — is that OK?’” Barr recalled. Just as the Knight Foundation had hoped, the projects evolved in ways well beyond the original concepts.

When the Prototype Fund began, the Knight Foundation forecast a minimum 80 percent fail rate, expecting only 20 percent of projects to win additional funding or move to product launch.  Within that scope of success, the Prototype Fund has had some impressive outcomes; see the stories of StoryCorps, Hollaback! and Curious City that follow.

Beyond successes with specific products and services, Prototype Fund projects have become catalysts for the growing use of human-centered design in all types of media organizations — a critical development in an industry grappling with enormous technological and social disruptions. For the Knight Foundation, that larger ripple of impact demonstrates considerable value toward the original goals.