How to come up with design concepts?
What is ideation?
The ideation stage is where designers generate as many solutions as possible to try to solve their defined problem (The defined problem can take the form of a user needs statement, problem statement, hypothesis etc).
Don’t fall for the myth that designers can just magically come up with ideas on the spot from a blank sheet of paper! Different techniques can be used to come up with ideas, as with everything, there is a process you can follow! Designers use tools, techniques, workshops that help individuals generate different ideas and help them to tap into their creativity.
Ideation can be done by the designer individually however it is recommended it is done as a team typically through ideation sessions or workshops. The reason for this is it’s more fun and you tend to get more interesting ideas this way.
Collaboration is a very important skill to have as a designer, as working with others generates better results. There is a quote which my old manager used to always say about collaboration which really resonated with me:
“Good collaboration is when you don’t know who came up with the final idea”
I love this as it shows how when you work as a team, you build upon each others ideas and end up with the final, more improved version of the idea
Ideation through workshops
As mentioned earlier, collaborating with others in your team is the best way to generate ideas. And the most effective way to do this is through workshops. A well facilitated workshop will result in a great number of solutions to help you solve your problems. Here is the typical approach with workshops:
Designer plans workshop
Designer invites relevant team members to the workshop and sends any prep work
Designer facilitates workshop on the day
The team come up with lots of ideas
Typically the team can prioritise the ideas together
Designer takes these ideas away to refine a chosen idea or to develop thinking further
Benefits of workshops
the designer isn’t having to generate the design ideas themselves
helps approach the design problem from different perspectives as members of different teams are involved
listening to peoples ideas can help inspire new ideas for others
a fun and creative way to develop ideas as opposed to doing it individually
can generate a lot of ideas in a short period of time (workshops are typically 1 hour long)
helps the development team feel part of the process which is motivating for them
helps the team to get an insight into the design process and how we work
get your initial ideas our of your head to make room for other ideas you hadn’t initially thought of
Always start with a HMW statement
A how-might-we statement is VERY effective at helping people frame the way the tackle a design challenge.
The word ‘how’ is great as it suggests there are multiple ways to solve the problem
‘Might’ is great because it allows for deviations so people don’t feel like they can’t explore other areas which may not be directly linked to the statement.
And of course ‘we’, this highlights that this is a team effort and the pressure isn’t on one individual to come up with the final solution. We are all here to offer our suggests and together we will come up with the best and final. It’s much easier to generate ideas without this pressure of having to do it individually.
Different types of ideation workshops
Crazy 8s
This is one of the most common workshops I have come across in my career. The team is given a sheet of paper to divide into 8 sections. They are then given a statement to focus on when sketching (How might we, Point of view, Problem statement) and they have 8 minutes to sketch 8 ideas! I know, it feels insane to think of 8 ideas in that time, but the goal here is to try and get all the ideas (including the bad ones) down on paper so then once they’re out of your head you can start to make room to think of others. You also don’t have to try to solve the entire problem in these sketches.
Ux collective
SCAMPER
This is one of my favourite methods. SCAMPER stands for:
Substitute: What can I substitute to make an improvement?
Combine: What ideas, features, processes, or components can I combine?
Adapt: What processes, features, or components should I adapt?
Modify: What can I make larger or make smaller?
Put to another use: What else can it be used for? Who else could use it?
Eliminate: What would happen if I removed a feature or part of it?
Reverse/rearrange: How can we rearrange the current status for an improved solution? What would happen by reversing the process?
The goal of this method is to help you to look at a problem through a different lens to how you normally do. And these words provide you with the different lenses. I love this image below as I feel like it really communicates the role of the SCAMPER technique where by looking at the problem from a different perspective, you are able to see different things!
Slow.co.uk
SUBSTITUE:
For this blog I will explain Substitute as it is my favourite one to use from the SCAMPER model but you can research and play around with the others also!
I’ll keep the description of this quite simple as there are many broad ways you can use this (eg substituting things in the product, service, ways of working etc). However we will focus on the How Might We statement. What phrases or words can you substitute in the HMW statement to create a new one, and then sketch ideas around this new statement - it doesn’t matter if the new statement changes the project. This is simply a way for you to think about the task from a different lens to give you new ideas. Once you’ve sketched these you can see how your ideas can be modified to work for your original HMW statement.
For example:
How might we help students who only have access to certain ingredients cook healthy meals during the week?
Examples of new statements:
How might we help students who want avocado in every meal cook meals that will last in the fridge during their lunch breaks
How might we help parents who have children with allergies cook meals that can be frozen during the weekend?
Now if you were to brainstorm ideas around the statements above, you would definitely get different ideas and solutions and then some of these could be modified for your initial How might we statement and the other ideas can inspire you to think of more!
Round Robin
This is a method where the team builds upon each others ideas to strengthen them further. Everyone in the team starts off by sketching one idea to try to solve the problem. They then pass their sheet of paper to the person sitting next to them. The next person critiques the idea and writes down 2 or 3 ways in may not work or things that need to be improved. The next team member takes the sheet of paper and looks at the concept and the feedback and spends time iterating the concept and developing it further. This team members then presents the idea back to the team.
This is great for developing ideas as the first designer isn’t making the changes and sometimes we can feel quite protective of our ideas and not see the potential gaps!
Conclusion
The main takeaway I want you to have from this post is that there are no rules! You can modify these methods to suit you or your project in any way! This is what I love about tools and techniques used in the design process, they’re very adaptable for what you need. As every project and design task is different. So feel free to mix and match these methods and adapt them to work for you.
There are also MANY more ideation methods which you can try, I’ve just gone through a few of my favourite ones which are easy to get results from. But spend some time learning about the others online.
And remember, it’s not only designers who can come up with the ideas. Our role is to help design ways to extract ideas from peoples minds, we don’t have to be the ones always coming up with the ideas! I have had many occasions where the developers and people working in support have come up with incredible ideas in my workshops!
