Imagine a museum which curates a design exhibition, but does not focus on the products of design. In Mexico City, the Museo Franz Mayer has done just this. Curating the work of studio JDE, founded by industrial designer Jorge Diego Etienne, this exhibition focuses on:
the iterative processes preceding market production, exhibiting preliminary sketches, scale models, working prototypes, material experiments, 3D printed studies, and unreleased design concepts. (Vergopoulou 2026)
Literally, the playground of the designer’s mind is what the exhibit curator has unexpectedly chosen to valorize and foreground. More such, please. Anyone can make pretty pictures, but to unpack your design process and your prototypes shows the path you have taken through the entire design journey from “I think I will make something” to “Look at this”. Jorge Diego Etienne believes “his country needs to progress from a “Made in Mexico” culture to one of “Designed in Mexico”” (Treffinger 2025). More than 20 years ago, in my first column for BusinessWeek (A Competitive Nation, By Design), suggested something to this effect – a future which distinguished making from conceiving, developing, iterating, and testing. By curating the inner workings of a design consultancy, the Museo Franz Meyer has just managed to capture my heart:
The exhibition layout is structured around the studio’s five methodological stages and fifteen core design principles, framing physical prototyping and error mitigation as fundamental risk-reduction tools. (Vergopoulou 2026)
Design is relevant not only for its results, but also for its processes and methods , where mistakes are a step towards success. The exhibition , which will inaugurate the Design and Processes Room and the Living Design Library, reveals how every stumble and correction is an essential part of learning. (Museo Franz Meyer)
Now, let us see such exhibitions for service design, business model design, or even new venture design. Imagine being able to trace the evolution of a successful startup from its original concept through all its iterations?