Open House Idea Generation

Last week in the studio, we were given the opportunity to work in small teams to come up with ideas on how to showcase the d.Studio in the upcoming Sauder Open House. We were very enthusiastic and jumped right in!

However, after reading Beckman and Barry’s innovation process, I feel that our group, or at least I did, as much as we felt that we got right into the design process, still approached the problem with our typical Commerce divergent thinking skills. We first defined our objectives of what we wanted to achieve during the Open House which was give a visual example of the “Brainstorm, Prototype, Presentation/Feedback, Implementation” process. Then, from our objective, we analysed our resources and capabilities to come up with ideas on how best to present this idea. After ruling our various options due to constraints that we encountered, we came up with our final recommendation and a plan for implementation.

Upon reflection of our process, this is almost exactly the same way that we would approach analysing a case. Set objectives/define the problem, analyse the situation, provide recommendations, and an action plan to implement. I thought I was getting the hang of convergent thinking but apparently, it’s harder than it looks! I have practiced the case analysis method so many times that I subconsciously always turn to that way of analysis, and it seems my group members did too as we all automatically ventured in this direction.

After reading about how Beckman and Barry define the innovation process to move from Observations > Frameworks (insights) > Imperatives (ideas) > Solutions, I realized that my progress as a design thinker has not moved as far along as I liked. I learnt that I need to make a conscious decision to think in convergent ways because the divergent side of my mind really overpowers the convergent side. I feel that our group have some of Beckman and Barry’s steps right but we were doing them in the wrong order.

Furthermore, I felt that when we were developing our Open House idea, we focused completely on what we wanted to communicate to our audience and not the other way round. We didn’t really put ourselves in our audience’s shoes and think about what they wanted to see or take away from visiting the studio. This was a fundamental building block of the innovation process which Beckman and Barry discussed in the article –  the idea that we must really analyse the use of the solution or idea by end users. I found this a very interesting way to look at the matter, instead of us telling the audience what they want to see, we spin it around and think of it in the sense of what they want to see.

It seemed like some groups embarked upon this path of looking at it from the audience’s point of view. I recall that only one of the groups came up with an idea where visitors of the room would actually be able to take something away from the studio (the “suiting up” of the gingerbread man?) and found this really interesting. It just shows that that group wanted to leave a memory with visitors, which could likely be what the users are looking for when they visit the studio, so the gingerbread man takeaway was a clever idea.

All in all, I feel that I have overestimated my ability to be a design thinker but this exercise has been a great learning experience. Learning about design thinking feels so intuitive and easy but as I just reflected, apparently I have not wrapped my head around it completely. I realize that it will take time and practice, practice, practice but most of all, I need to take the first step and consciously make the decision to engage design thinking strategies before my mind will subconsciously do it for me.