The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design: Ideation
I’m arming myself with the wisdom of the veterans at IDEO by reading through their field guide. These are notes from the Ideation section. I put a ★ beside sections that I think are particularly important for us to pay attention to in the coming weeks.
See the Introduction notes here.
How do I make sense of what I’ve learned?
How do I turn my learnings into an opportunity for design?
How do I make a prototype?
How do I know my idea is working?
Capture ideas and observations from interviews (preferably the day of) onto post-its. Talk about each one and listen closely to each others’ stories.
Share the most compelling stories and put key information on post-its. Cluster stories about the same person together.
Everyone writes down their top five ideas or themes sticking out to them right now, and then shares them with the group. Cluster like ideas together to see which ones are the most interesting or important. Consider doing this activity multiple times across the ideation phase.
After Downloading Your Learnings and Sharing Inspiring Stories, rearrange the post-its around patterns and themes. Don’t stop until the clusters represent rich opportunities for design.
Create Insight Statements ★
After Finding Themes, take your themes and rephrase each into a short insight statement. Once you’ve done this for all your themes, look back at your original design challenge and discard all the insights that are not directly relevant. You only want three to five insight statements. Make sure that they convey a sense of new perspective or possibility. Consider inviting someone who isn’t part of your team to read your insights and see how they resonate.
Human-centered design is an inherently intuitive process. Articulate your hunch to your teammates to get their feedback. If it resonates, figure out how to validate or disprove it. This could involve a brainstorm, building a prototype or running your idea past an expert in an interview.
Rephrase your insights as “How might we” questions. Ask yourself if they allow for a variety of solutions. They should be narrow enough to let you know where to start for a brainstorm but broad enough to give you room to explore wild ideas.
A framework is a visual representation of a system and a great way to make sense of data. Use them to highlight key relationships and develop your strategy. These include journey maps, relational maps and 2x2s.
Pose a question to your group, pass out post-its and pens and then generate as many ideas as possible. The goal is lots of ideas, not perfect ideas. The group mindset should be generative, not critical.
Build on the ideas of others
Stay focused on the topic
One conversation at a time
Once you have lots of drawings and ideas on the wall, it’s time to move them around to form more complex solutions. Cluster similar ideas, build groupings out of themes and patterns you’ve found and then ask yourself how the best elements might live in a system. Now you’re moving from individual ideas to full-on solutions!
This is more of a general approach than a one-off activity. Everyone can benefit from thinking visually; getting visual makes ideas more tangible and can help others to understand and build upon them.
Mash-ups are an opportunity to pose bold, even unreasonable questions to speed your thinking: “What’s the Facebook version of a savings account?” Afterwards, Brainstorm what it would look like in the context in which you’re designing.
After Finding Themes, consider the core principles underpinning them. Frame these as positive statements that might tell you how and what to design. They should be short and to the point, and describe a singular idea. Make sure they cover the key aspects of your solution. Be ready to revise your principles as you start to build prototypes and test your ideas. They might take a while to reveal themselves but once you spot them, they are essential.
A concept is more polished and complete than an idea. It’s more sophisticated, something that you’ll want to test with the people you’re designing for, and it’s starting to look like an answer to your design challenge. Keep referring back to your design challenge and ask yourself if you are answering it. What else can you incorporate to come up with a great solution?
The purpose of a Co-Creation Session is to convene a group of people from the community you’re serving and then get them to design alongside you. Use Conversation Starters, a Brainstorm, Role Playing, Rapid Prototyping or other activities to get your group engaged. The goal isn’t just to hear from people, it’s to get them on your team. Make sure you’re treating your co-creators as designers, not as interview subjects.
Have a look at your more promising ideas and distill them to their essences. Now, list all the constraints and barriers that stand in your way and post them on the wall. Perhaps have a Brainstorm about how to evolve your idea within the constraints. Don’t be afraid of letting an idea go.
Determine What to Prototype ★
Write down the key elements of your idea, your hypothesis. Think practically about what needs to be tested and write down your primary questions for each component. Figure out the quickest and dirtiest way to answer these questions.
Storyboarding part of your idea can help you learn a lot about your idea. Not only will it help you refine what your idea is, it can also help you understand who will use it, where, and how. Keep it rough.
Role Playing is a way of prototyping an idea, experience, or product by putting yourself in the shoes of the people you’re designing for. Assign roles to your team members and act out the interaction.
Once you’ve Determined What to Prototype, it’s time to build it. It can take many forms: Role Playing, models, mock-ups. The goal is to make something tangible that conveys the idea you want to test.
Print out a Business Model Canvas and fill it out. The sheet asks you key questions like what’s your revenue stream, what are key partnerships you’ll need to forge, and what resources are vital to your operation. When you fill it out the first time, expect for there to be holes. Like everything else in the human-centered design process, you’ll refine it as you go.
Once you have a prototype, share it with as many people who are relevant to your design problem as possible. Write down the feedback and use it to push your ideas further.
Integrate Feedback and Iterate ★
After receiving feedback from the people you’re designing for, share the feedback you received with your team. Share Inspiring Stories or Download Your Learnings. Get tangible and start building the next iteration of your prototype. You’ll probably do this a few times to work out the kinks and get to the right answer.
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