Really, Really Rapid Prototyping: Flash Builds and User-driven Innovation at JSTOR Labs

To build a platform for (high, sustainable) use, we need to know what will thrill users. Finding the right concoction of technology, functionality and design to delight users takes a thousand decisions, pivots and changes. The JSTOR Labs team has been using Flash Builds-high-intensity, short-burst, user-driven development efforts-in order to prototype new ideas and get to a user saying “Wow” in as little as a week. In this paper, a distillation of a presentation I gave at NFAIS 2015, I will describe how we have done this, highlighting the partnerships, skills, tools and content that help us innovate.