- In synthesis, the team will have identified
promising opportunity areas which represent
a human need and an opportunity for the business.
However, a strong need and a viable opportunity
for the business can still result
in run-of-the-mill ideas or me-too solutions
that are just copying what others are doing.
Fresh, new ideas are hard to come by
through everyday thinking and conversation,
and people need ways to generate new ideas.
Many of the concept generation tools that Frog uses
are based on the concept of lateral thinking,
a term coined by psychologist Edward de Bono.
It's an approach to creativity that pushes us
to look at something familiar in a new way
by introducing stimuli that disrupt the way
we normally think about the problem
or the solutions.
During concept generation, teams use these methods
to produce as many ideas as possible.
After idea generation, teams evaluate
and select the best ideas.
Those with the most potential and value
are evolved and visualized to a higher level of fidelity
in order to extend the idea.
The next steps might then be to get
feedback from people who might use the product,
or do deeper feature definition to determine
how it will work for the business,
or any number of other steps,
depending on where the team is in the development cycle.
For example, our healthcare team
recently conducted research with elders
seeking to stay in their homes longer.
Using their research insights as a framework,
the team created a concepting workshop
with activities that encouraged lateral thinking.
The first concept pass generated over 70 ideas.
Some were quite rich,
and others were good seed ideas, but needed work.
When their creativity dropped,
the team organized an open session
for the whole studio, and generated more ideas
with all these new perspectives at the table.
This whole collection of ideas were then
sorted and clustered into about 47 meta concepts,
which the team evaluated based on
how well they met the user needs framework,
and the technical and market feasibility.
At the end, they selected about 18 ideas
for further development.
These 18 ideas will be taken back out into the field
to share with elders and be refined.
To see a full concept iteration in action,
watch it at the link below.
Concepting uses some structured activities,
time boxing, and frequent idea remixing,
to enable teams with different perspectives
to quickly iterate on each other's ideas.
There are a few considerations
common to many concepting activities
that I'd like you to keep in mind.
The first is delaying judgement.
When you're creating ideas, explicitly delay judgement.
It's crucial to enable you to achieve a breadth of ideas.
You don't want the team to dive in
too deep to any one idea,
or focus on what they can't do,
instead of getting to those great "what if" moments.
This structured approach is different
from open brainstorming, where lots of ideas
are thrown out in the hopes that a diamond will emerge.
You also need a supportive culture,
where people feel safe to put forth any idea
without fearing critique.
It's kind of similar to delaying judgement,
but what you want to do here is really encourage
this "yes, and" attitude towards
building on others' ideas.
The third thing is visual thinking
or making things tangible,
manifesting ideas in some way through sketches,
prototypes, performances, or diagrams,
or almost any other kind of representation,
helps the team quickly absorb and respond to rough ideas.
Concepting should always have a tangible element,
and if you're finding that your teams
are reluctant to draw, or to perform something,
really push this when you facilitate these activities.
The concepting phase is meant to give the team
enough time and runway to go from the expected,
to the unexpected and ridiculous,
to the unexpected and appropriate.
Getting to appropriate means that
worthwhile concepts need to be
compelling, valuable, and innovative,
and feasible and profitable for the business,
or sustainable for the community.