Step 1: Sorting
Take a look at your team’s initial concepts to see if there any that you think have promise, but just didn’t make the cut to the Top 5 Ideas.
Run through all of your team’s concepts again and select out any of these promising concepts that didn’t make the cut to be in the Top 5. Then, set aside all of the others. Don’t physically throw anything away, but take them out of the running for now.
Step 2: Building on Ideas
Work with your team to ideate and push these promising concepts further
Use the 77 cards to help inspire you on how to evolve your concepts. Do some visual brainstorming about how these concepts might be improved. Are there obvious opportunities? Are there features from rejected ideas that could be combined or incorporated? As a team, come up with at least 8 variations or improvements. These do not have to be totally new ideas– its ok if they’re variations on your previous concepts. Document these new concepts/variations so you can put them on your website.
Step 3: Choose Concepts for Prototyping
Take a look at your set of brilliant, innovative concepts and have each person choose one concept that they want to move forward to prototype.
This means that your team will choose 4-5 concepts to prototype, depending on how many teammates you have. The concepts chosen do not need to be completely unique products; your team may find value in prototyping variations of a given product to see which variation works best.
The concepts should be chosen based on how well they solve the user’s problem in the user’s context… and also how feasible it will be for your team to build a rough prototype of the concept in the coming weeks. These prototypes will be similar in detail to the prototypes you created for the wallet project– cardboard and duct tape are ok, but they will need to be neatly constructed.
Step 4: Create Detailed Drawings
Draw out your chosen concepts on paper, with a bit more detail than before.
These drawings will act as a blueprint for you when you build future prototypes, so the more detail you can add the better!
Any of the following you can add to your detailed drawing will be helpful to your future self:
- Multiple views (side, front, top)
- Showing the product in use (how will the person hold it? how does it interact with other products?)
- Short notes to give info on details (materials used, etc)
- A note with estimated dimensions of each part/component of the prototype
- A note with proposed materials needed to construct the prototype
Step 5: Team Reflection
As a team, reflect on your ideation activities and write up your thoughts.
Consider any/all of the following questions, but feel free to add your own focus. The reflection should be about 300 words.
How did this activity go for your team? Did you find that working with your team promoted more ideation, or would you have rather completed this activity solo? What was it like to push past initial ideas and come up with more concepts? How do you feel about your final concepts? Any concerns moving forward?