Joey Marburger went into some detail for Source on the creation of The Washington Post’s The Grid. The Grid is meant to be a dynamic and interactive platform for staying up to date on breaking news stories, including an “even mix of photos, instagrams, tweets, articles, videos, animated gifs, quotes, and other content types.”

Marburger explains the collaborative process of building the front and back ends of The Grid and also offers some thoughts on responsive design — but most useful is his explanation of why flexible prototyping is important to building a product that can be widely and productively repurposed.

The media industry has to try new things. When we started conceptualizing The Grid we had no idea where it would take us. Prototyping unlocked more ideas and furthered the concept of The Grid to where it is today. It allows us to try new designs, test new features quickly, and above all, move fast. The Grid changed the culture of how we develop products in the Washington Post newsroom. Yes, the product has been successful, but many more products have been successful because of it. The cultural needle has shifted and that is what technologists do. They change how we work.