Concept Development: The long tail of design decisions
In Design Decisions I outlined the 4 types of decisions I focus on in design projects - project definition, research planning, design analysis and concept development. This post focuses on concept development decisions - nurturing early stage ideas, developing those ideas and following through with execution.
There comes a point in most design projects when you realize you have a bunch of half ideas that are half-baked, which you are at best halfway excited about. Taking these ideas to the next level is hard work. Teams must decide which are the good ideas, why they are good and how to make them better. Many decisions must be made to follow-through with an initial promising idea and make it real. I refer to these as Concept Development decisions.
Generate early stage ideas
There has been plenty of discussion about the best way for teams to develop ideas. Some people love brainstorming. Others claim it doesn’t really work. I think there's no best way to generate ideas - it depends on an organization's culture, the types of people involved and probably many other factors. I happen to be a fan of the way we ran brainstorms at IDEO but I don't really intend to change any opinions on this one. I think the most important work is what happens leading up to and following the point where a team is generating ideas. If ahead of time the team has not invested enough effort into understanding the problems they are solving for, then any ideas generated are likely to be too abstract to understand or evaluate in a meaningful way. The work that follows the initial early stage idea generation is equally critical - ideas are nurtured, given shape and more thoroughly understood.
Nurture fragile ideas
When surrounded by a bunch of ideas it can be hard to resist the urge to cull the field. Narrowing the range of options is a quick way to feel like progress is being made. There is a risk of evaluating too soon however - newly formed ideas don't stand a chance if they come under attack too soon. The risk is teams eliminate ideas from consideration before they even really know what the ideas are. Jony Ive famously appreciated Steve Job's recognition of this fact in his 2011 speech.
"You see, I think he better than anyone understood that while ideas ultimately can be so powerful, they begin as fragile, barely formed thoughts, so easily missed, so easily compromised, so easily just squished."
Before leaping to evaluating ideas it's important to give them a little space. I like to put some "meat on the bones" of these fragile thoughts in the form of very rough prototypes. Simple drawings, storyboards and discussion help the team to understand the ideas better.
Once an idea is understood there's a chance that someone on the team is able to build on the idea or is inspired to contribute a variation on the initial idea. This idea generation continues beyond any single brainstorming event and can be a rich source of stronger, more well formed ideas.
Evaluate, combine and eliminate (for now)
These more well formed and better understood ideas can now stand up to some level of criticism. I like to guide this criticism by referring to criteria from the project definition and user experience criteria developed during design analysis. This makes the evaluation more rational and the discussion more fruitful than when the conversation is guided purely by personal preference or unarticulated bias.
This structured conversation may raise new research questions or illuminate unconscious points of view from within the project team that merit revisiting the project definition. Conflicting points of view also arise as one team member feels a criteria is satisfied by an idea while another team member doesn't. These conversations help create shared understanding within the team and can be the source of new ideas, questions and insights. The team may decide to alter the project definition and criteria or undertake new research to address new questions that arise.
