This stage focuses on the generation of new ideas (ideation) that can either enhance existing products or service systems or create entirely new propositions.
I WANT TO CREATE A CONCEPT…
In this stage new solution concepts are generated, potential user experiences or customer journeys are envisioned and mapped out and all of the key touchpoints in the overall system are prototyped. Touchpoints are the key interactions with customers and some of these are ‘moments of truth’, those crucial moments between the customer and the product, system or organisation, which will define the quality of the overall experience and leave lasting memories that may influence their future relationship with a brand, service provider or other organisation.
It is a collaborative, inclusive and iterative activity where the designer or engineer might act more as the facilitator and choreographer of diverse users and other stakeholders, drawing out from them their ideas through a co-creation process and giving these often loose concepts form and coherence. The designer or engineer does not have to be the parent to every idea, but can be like a midwife, bringing them into the world, then nurturing and developing them.
It will involve a range of activities such as considering pre-existing solutions; identifying, filtering and developing solution concepts; and making models to evaluate potential ideas for improvement. Some of the creativity tools involved in developing a solution may include but are not limited to: Brainstorming, Alternative worlds, Serious Play, Future Scenarios, SCAMPER, Six Thinking Hats and Morphological Analysis.
WHEN TO Begin this Stage
Before ideating it’s important that we have framed the problem or opportunity into a clear statement defining the goals and criteria for success and that we understand what the key internal and external constraints and dependencies are.
The brief and project plan should be agreed with any changes by all project partners and resources should be assigned for the next stages.
It can also be valuable to do some elements of the ideate stage ahead of a detailed ‘Focus’ stage because it can help understand the direction of travel for the project before committing to a particular strategy.
What are the OUTCOMES
Generate new concepts
Rapidly prototype and test
Develop a detailed product or service system proposition
Generate a holistic user experience that creates new value
Understand the operational, environmental, social and commercial implications
CASE STUDY
I WANT TO CREATE A CONCEPT…
By thinking differently
Introduction
Creative thinkers rarely conjure ideas from thin air; often they start by looking at common things in uncommon ways and they are often not working alone. To stimulate diverse thinking and to be as inclusive as possible aim to include as many people from as diverse a range of backgrounds as possible. The following tools give structure to the ideation process helping you to think laterally, merge worlds and open opportunities.
Building a Creative Environment
To create an environment that will support creative ideation from a diverse audience, the most important thing is that you and any other participants approach the task with the mindset that no idea is too absurd and that it's better to create as many wild ideas as possible. With this in mind, using these tools should be fun and light hearted, but they are not just games, have faith in them - Later the ideas can be adapted and merged to form more realistic propositions. The freshest thinking is often found amongst the strangest ideas.
Ideate everything from interactions to the business model
It’s important that as you develop these concepts you are not restricting your creative thinking simply to one area of the concept. These tools should help encourage you to think broadly about all aspects of the concept, for instance, while the core function of your intervention must be about resolving a particular problem, your concept will need to be sustainable from an economic perspective and you will therefore need to creatively consider how a business model will be formed around it. This applies to all elements of the solutions you are looking for where there may be opportunity for innovation. It might be about the location of your business, the types of staff you work with, the channels people use to reach you or the way they interact. All of these elements must be considered early on not just because it is practical but because they also offer more opportunity for radical innovation.
I WANT TO CREATE A CONCEPT…
By co-creating with stakeholders
Introduction
Hold co-creation workshops
Engaging with people throughout your design process will always enrich it. The people involved in your product or service can tell you a great deal, but they can show you even more if they are given the chance. Co-creation workshops are great in this stage of the process and beyond, but don’t be afraid to create similar workshops in the earlier stages of your work as well.
The purpose of a Co-Creation Session is to bring together a group of people you’re designing for and then bring them into the design process. You’re not just hearing what they have to say, you’re enabling them to create, alongside you. You can co-create products and services, form ideas, understand what features are important, investigate how to name your solution, or what its logo should look like. Not only is a community far more likely to adopt a product or service that it helped design, but you’ll learn valuable insight into all the facets of your solution.
Organise people and place
You first have to identify who it is that you might want in your session, carefully considering who will bring the best out of each other (and who might cause friction). For ideation it’s best if the group is diverse and represents different segments of your users (including those who are often under-represented). It may be a group of people you’ve already interviewed or a particular demographic like firefighters or people with a particular health condition or people from a community for example. Once you know who you want to be present, arrange a space by getting the necessary supplies (which are often pens, Post-its, paper and maybe art supplies), and invite them to join (snacks and beverages tend to help).
Set tasks
It’s important to make the most of workshops because they are resource intensive, so carefully plan the activities. An example could be to introduce your understanding of the challenge and ask for feedback to ensure they agree and to get them engaged with the problem you (and hopefully they) are trying to solve. Then, source their ideas with some fun ideation exercises like ‘Alternative worlds’ and ‘Crazy 8’s’, then they can discuss in groups the merits of the ideas, prioritise some and use the ‘Concept Capture’ and ‘Role Play’ to expand and explain the idea.
Capture the learnings
These workshops will be rich with information and constant discussion. So it is critical that you work with some teammates to collect and capture as much as possible. With the consent of all the participants, it can be very helpful to record video and audio in each group of people to reflect on later and it will help to have multiple facilitators to investigate what’s happening, who can ask why people are doing and saying the things they are. Having moments of group feedback, presentation and reflection helps encourage clearer expression and elevate the group understanding of the discussion. Remember your participants should be treated as co-designers in this context, not interview subjects.
I WANT TO CREATE A CONCEPT…
By materialising ideas
Introduction
Having created a collection of new ideas through ideation techniques and co-creation workshops, it is now important to bring some of those ideas closer to reality to add depth to the concepts and interrogate their value. The process should be repeated to establish a detailed understanding of how a concept might work. All of these activities can also be done with other stakeholders in a co-creative session.
Bring ideas to life
Design reframes problems, but it also imagines potential future scenarios where there is a solution. This imagined future scenario must be brought to life as much as possible so that the designers, stakeholders and project partners can picture or experience how it would work and critique issues with the concept or build on and improve them. The activities involved in this can be called ‘rapid prototyping’ and they ultimately create manifestations of the future concepts in order to encourage critique and refinement.
Think, describe and share a concept in different ways
Storyboards, Wireframes, Newspaper headline tools and Concept Capture tools are all paper based tools that ask you to bring to life your concept in different ways: by thinking about what the screens of digital interfaces would look like, what the key moment of interaction will be, how a newspaper would talk about and celebrate the concept or how the story would be told. Each of these different methods for bringing it to life help you think in a different way and they help you communicate to others in a different way. Both of which enable the evolution and iteration of your concepts to deepen how they may work and be experienced.
Act out the experience
In addition to these paper based techniques you can also do ‘Rapid Prototypes’ and later ‘Simulation’ or ‘Serious Play’, which approach prototyping by trying to get people to embody the physical experiences of the product or service. They can be developed in very low fidelity ways or with larger investment to create environments and props to make higher fidelity experiences. These help the people involved (or observing) have greater empathy for future users, helping to manifest more nuanced interactions that would emerge in the real situation as well as helping to place more emphasis on the role of broader front-end and back-end systems.
I WANT TO CREATE A CONCEPT…
By comparing ideas
Introduction
By this point you have been developing a number of concepts by iteratively making quick prototypes of how they would work. In the next stage, you will be sharpening your focus onto one concept to refine and develop it. In order to get to that point, you need to compare your ideas against each other, against competitors and against the objectives you have set in the original scope, the design brief and the KPI’s you agreed with your partners. Begin by reviewing existing solutions (see competitor map) and your position in relation to them and compare concepts using the ‘prioritisation matrix’ which evaluates the performance of a concept based on its impact and its likelihood of success. This activity, like many others, can be greatly enhanced by involving your users and stakeholders in the process.
Using these prioritised ideas compare their performance in more detailed terms against your brief, your scope and KPI’s to confirm if they are suitable. Before you agree on a direction with your partners, first examine closely how these ideas would impact the people around them and the systems they operate within, particularly the environmental impacts they may have. Look for any opportunities you can to intervene and prevent unnecessary impact. With the remaining idea or ideas you must gain support from your project partners and sponsors for the refinement of one concept before continuing.
