Liberating Structures
Improv Prototyping
Develop effective solutions to chronic challenges while having serious fun. This structure lets you move from concept to tangible iteration in minutes, not months—giving everyone permission to experiment, fail fast, and discover what actually works through hands-on creation rather than endless discussion.
Improv Prototyping
What is made possible - What it unlocks
Improv Prototyping breaks the paralysis of perfectionism and invites creative risk-taking. Participants experience the thrill of making something real—however rough—and gain immediate feedback that accelerates learning. It democratizes innovation by showing that anyone can prototype, not just designers or engineers. Ideas become tangible, testable, and improvable in real time.
When to use it
- When you need to quickly explore multiple solutions to a complex challenge
- When your team is stuck in abstract debate and needs to make ideas concrete
- When you want to generate rapid feedback and iterate on concepts in real time
- When you’re developing new products, services, or processes and want to test assumptions early
- When you want to engage diverse voices in co-creating solutions
- When you need to build confidence through experimentation rather than analysis
- When you’re launching a new initiative and want to stress-test it before committing resources
- When you want to shift culture from “talking about change” to “making change happen”
🛠️ The five design elements of Improv Prototyping
Each Liberating Structure consists of five simple design elements to make participation possible for everyone. By shaping these elements with care, you move beyond rigid control or chaos and create space for people to contribute, listen, and co-create.
- 1. The Invitation
- 2. Setup & Materials
- 3. Participation Flow
- 4. Group Configuration
- 5. Sequence & Timing
How you frame the purpose or question that sets the focus and energy of the group.
Invite participants to identify a frustrating chronic challenge in their work, then to playfully experiment, invent, and discover better ways to address the challenge by acting out the situation and possible solutions.
The arrangement of space and which tools or resources are needed to support interaction.
- An open space or stage at the front or in the middle of a room
- If needed, props for the scene or scenes to be offered
- Small clusters of chairs to accommodate all participants
- Timer visible to all participants
- Space that encourages playfulness and experimentation—permission to make a mess
- For virtual sessions: digital whiteboard tools, collaborative docs, or screen-sharing for demos
Who gets a voice and how everyone is actively included in the process.
- Everyone is included either as players or observers
- A few volunteers to be “players”
- Everyone else acts as observers and evaluators, then co-creative players
- Iteration cycles: create/act → test → feedback → improve → repeat
How people are arranged (alone, small groups, or all together) and how this shifts during the activity.
- One small group of players on “the stage”
- All others, the observers, in small groups (5-8 persons) in front or around the stage
- Unlimited amount of people
The step-by-step flow of the activity and the time given to each step to keep energy and focus.
- Explain the process and describe the sequence of steps (2 min)
- Set the stage by describing the scenario and roles to be acted out (3 min)
- Players enact the scene on stage (3–5 min)
- Each small observer group debriefs with 1-2-4-All to identify successful and unsuccessful “chunks” from the scene that they just observed (5 min)
- Each observer group assembles the successful elements into a new prototype, then volunteers act it out for their own observer group (5 min)
- One observer group with an improved prototype volunteers to perform their version on stage for everyone (3-5 min)
- Repeat rounds until you arrive at one or more prototypes ready to put into practice.
Total time: 20 min. per round
Online version
Adapted for virtual use, with the same impact
Prepare breakout rooms for small groups of 5-8 people.
- Explain the process and describe the sequence of steps (2 min)
- Set the stage by describing the scenario and roles to be acted out (3 min)
- Players enact the scene in the main room, while all other participants keep their cameras and microphones off. (3–5 min)
- Now, open breakout rooms and let each small observer group identify successful and unsuccessful “chunks” from the scene that they just observed (5 min)
- Each observer group assembles the successful elements into a new prototype, then volunteers act it out for their own observer group in their own breakout room (5 min)
- One observer group with an improved prototype volunteers to perform their version in the main room for everyone (3-5 min)
- Repeat rounds until you arrive at one or more prototypes ready to put into practice.
Total time: 20 min. per round
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All Liberating Structures in 1 e-book
All Liberating Structures (44!) including explanations, visual step-by-step guide, and worksheets in a handy workbook for € 11,-
- Simple methods for big changes
- Have interactions that truly matter
- Build a culture of innovation step by step
- Involve and activate everyone in the group
Proven over decades
🧠 Why it works
Liberating Structures are not magic tricks—they work because they tap into how people naturally think, connect, and collaborate. Each structure is carefully designed to unlock participation, spark creativity, and build trust, using principles grounded in social science and human interaction.
Attribution: Liberating Structure developed by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless. Inspired by Antonas Mockus (former mayor of Bogota) and Improv artists.
Embodied Learning
Acting out scenarios engages participants physically and emotionally, making challenges and solutions visceral rather than abstract, which deepens understanding and retention.
Safe Experimentation
The theatrical frame creates psychological safety, allowing people to try bold approaches and fail without real-world consequences.
Immediate Feedback Loops
Testing and refining in rapid cycles reveals what works and what doesn't in real time, accelerating learning exponentially compared to planning alone.
Playful Creativity
The improvisational nature breaks conventional thinking patterns and invites spontaneous innovation that structured planning often suppresses.
Riffs and Variations
Start with creative constraints to learn this structure and then... go liberate yourself and try some variations.
- Multiple scenario tests: Run several different challenging situations in sequence to stress-test the same prototype
- Reverse roles: Have participants play opposing stakeholders (customer vs. provider, manager vs. employee) to surface hidden tensions
- Fast-forward futures: Act out scenes set months or years ahead to explore long-term implications of solutions
- Silent scenes: Remove dialogue to focus on actions and body language, revealing non-verbal dynamics
- Exaggeration round: Amplify problems or solutions to absurd extremes to identify core patterns
- Use systemic work: Reveal hidden relationships and forces at play, then prototype interventions that address root dynamics rather than surface symptoms
- Cross-pollination: Have groups swap scenarios midway through to bring fresh perspectives to each challenge
Tips
Lessons learned from other facilitators.
- Start with a clear, specific scenario that everyone understands—vague setups lead to confused scenes
- Be as inclusive as possible: invite everyone in different roles to join in. Consider creating 3 supporting roles depending on the complexity of the scenario: stage manager, creative director, and facilitator
- Encourage “Yes, and…” thinking from improv—build on what’s working rather than critique
- Keep initial scenes short and punchy—3 minutes is often enough to reveal key dynamics
- Focus observer feedback on concrete, actionable observations: “When you did X, I noticed Y”
- Model willingness to look silly yourself—your playfulness gives others permission
- Invite people to let go of assumptions and biases by putting themselves in the shoes of others, e.g., doctor plays nurse and nurse plays doctor, student plays professor
- Celebrate both breakthroughs and disasters—failure scenes often teach the most
Traps
Don't make the same mistakes.
- Letting scenes run too long—energy dissipates and focus blurs after 5 minutes
- Allowing sidebar conversations during scenes—undermines performers and splits attention
- Skipping the observer debrief—missing the collective intelligence of the group
- Being too precious about “getting it right”—kills the experimental spirit
- Not giving everyone a chance to perform—observers miss the embodied learning
- Stopping after one good prototype—the best solutions often emerge in rounds 3-4
- Replaying scenes that do not capture the imagination or generate new ideas without changing the approach
- Forgetting to bridge back to real work—prototype insights must translate to action
Try it with…
The real power of Liberating Structures emerges when you combine them into "strings." Link different structures together to build on insights and create more powerful results. Here are some nice combinations:
- TRIZ to identify core contradictions before acting out scenarios
- 1-2-4-All to generate scenarios and debrief observer insights
- What, So What, Now What? (W3) to harvest learnings and plan implementation after prototyping rounds
- 15% Solutions to identify immediate actions based on prototype discoveries
- Critical Uncertainties to develop scenarios worth prototyping
- User Experience Fishbowl to bring real stakeholder voices into the prototyping process
- Discovery & Action Dialogues and Simple Ethnography to draw meaningful themes and dramatic lines for each scene
Field stories
To get to know Liberating Structures without having used them yourself, it helps to see familiar situations from real-life practice. Chances are that you or your team have faced one of these challenges before. Discover how to approach these kinds of situations in a fresh and engaging way.
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Improv Prototyping
Develop effective solutions to chronic challenges while having serious fun.
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