- A concept is an idea expressed with enough detail
for another person to understand it.
In design thinking, we want to provide
opportunities for the creation
of unexpected concepts,
those which draw on both our formal
and logical knowledge,
and on our human instincts for "what if" possibilities.
Lateral thinking exercises drive the creation
of these unexpected concepts.
During early concept development,
we want to produce as many new ideas as possible.
This focus on breadth allows us to develop
seeds of ideas without worrying
about the details or feasibility,
though that does come in later,
as we do want to get things made real.
The Random Entry Activity is based on
Edward de Bono's concept of lateral thinking.
It introduces unrelated random objects
as stimuli for generating ideas on a specific focus area.
The randomness of the object pushes teams
out of their typical patterns of thinking around the topic.
Random Entry is meant to generate a lot of ideas,
many of which are pretty weird and far out,
but amongst them are interesting seeds
of new possibilities that may not
have been thought of otherwise.
I often use this activity to kickstart concept generation
early on in the design phase.
It's also good for getting your team
out of a rut in thinking.
It really pushes you to look at things
from a sometimes wildly different perspective
and you'll often surprise yourself at what comes out.
It is a structured exercise with specific steps
and a worksheet.
That's available in the exercise files.
It's best done in small teams of 3-5 people,
which encourages everyone to participate.
You usually have one person who's mostly writing,
and I would encourage you to have them use a Sharpie
to avoid writing too much about any single idea.
Random Entry does need a bit of planning to run well.
First off, you need to have some clear focus areas.
Usually these come from your research findings
in opportunity areas.
Finding the right ones is really important
and may take you a few tries.
Focus areas that are too broad
will leave the teams wandering around,
but if it's too narrow they'll be over-constrained.
You need to pick some random objects.
They should be objects that can be held
and interacted with.
Their goal is just to create associations
and they shouldn't be directly related
to your topic area at all.
For example, this is a pretty good example
of a random object.
From this object, I can draw
a lot of associations really quickly.
I can draw travel, the gnome.
I can draw fantasy.
He's got this trench coat on,
I could start imagining intrigue.
He's got a Santa beard,
I can have Santa, presents, and things like that.
When I'm looking for a random object,
if I can't immediately list off
five associations with it,
I keep looking for another object.
You start the activity by defining the focus areas.
I often use this activity in a workshop
where we've already shared out our research findings.
The important thing is that everyone understands
what we are doing and why,
and that they understand the focus areas
we're using in the activity.
Then we divide into those small groups,
each of which gets a random object and a worksheet.
At this point, you may get some strange looks from the room
unless you help folks understand
that the first step is just to quickly
list off any associations they have with the object
in that first part of the worksheet.
Remind them that the associations shouldn't have
anything to do with the focus area.
You're only giving them about five minutes to do this,
so tell them they're going for volume.
When each group has that list of associations,
hand out the focus areas.
The teams will spend the next 25 minutes or so
asking, "What if we combined this association
"with our focus area?"
And generating fast, one-liner ideas.
Again, the goal is breadth and volume,
and you should encourage folks not to judge.
The first time they do this, it might go slowly.
The second round usually goes a lot faster.
Once the worksheets are done,
the groups talk about the range of ideas they've generated
and they pick several they're interested in.
You then follow this activity with either
an idea quick capture worksheet
to lightly flesh out those interesting ideas
to a point where they can be shared
with the wider group,
or use the refinement worksheets
to give it more depth.
Both of these worksheets are in the exercise files also.
At the end of these series of steps,
you've talked about the focus area,
you've done the Random Entry exercise,
and you've either done the quick capture
or refinement activity.
Your team will have several ideas fleshed out
in enough depth to be shared with the fuller group.
Each of these ideas will relate
to your key opportunity areas,
and your team can now begin to assess them
for inclusion in your next iteration.