Experimental Prototyping
Sometimes you can't really know whether a design will work until you better understand some implementation detail. You might not know if a particular database organization will work until you know whether it will meet your performance goals. You might not know whether a particular subsystem design will work until you select the specific GUI libraries you'll be working with. These are examples of the essential "wickedness" of software design—you can't fully define the design problem until you've at least partially solved it.
A general technique for addressing these questions at low cost is experimental prototyping. The word "prototyping" means lots of different things to different people (McConnell 1996). In this context, prototyping means writing the absolute minimum amount of throwaway code that's needed to answer a specific design question.
Of course, prototyping was to be done in the sandbox. Once we get the idea - precisely! We'll work on the prototype to get the idea. And then we move to the main trunk.
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