Product Management Playbook — Part 3/6 — Ideation

The question we ask in this segment is “How can we solve user problems effectively and efficiently so that the solution is within our business model and constraints?”

In my series “Product Management Playbook — 6 Part Series”, I focus on how product managers can build awesome products that users will actually love and use. In the First Part, we understood the users and their problems. In the Second Part, we looked at how do we combine all the research and define where the problem’s exist. In this Third Part, we will look at how can we ideate to find an appropriate solution for the needs and problems we defined.

The goal of this phase is to ideate to find the best possible solution to solve user’s problems or address the user’s needs.

Ideation is at the heart of any discipline. Whatever you are doing in your life either professionally or personally, you will use ideation to find the best possible way. Ideation is the process in which you concentrate on idea generation. We all know that there are almost always multiple ways to solve a problem or address a need. Ideation provides fuel for building prototypes through an iterative process.

In this article, we’ll look at most popular ideation techniques which will help you find the solution you are looking for. Please feel free to combine your rational thoughts with your imagination. It is extremely important that you choose the technique that suits your context and requirement.

Popular Ideation Techniques:

Brainstorm

Brainstorming is the most used method in ideation. When you brainstorm, you work with a group of people to come up with individual ideas and start building on each other’s ideas. Here, the most important quality of brainstorming is using the power of multiple brains instead of one. Brainstorming leverages the concept of synergy where the interaction and cooperation of two or more people produce a combined output greater than the sum of their individual outputs. While you brainstorm, create an open environment where all the participants can go wild with their imagination without any boundaries.

Mindmap

Mindmapping is a graphical method of building web of relationships. Mindmapping involves starting with a central theme and coming up with new and associated ideas that branch out from the central theme. Mindmapping happens in four stages — You start out by putting the central theme at the center of an empty page. Define each branch from the central theme for each idea. Highlight the priorities for each of the branches. Finally, work on generating ideas for each of the branches around he identified priorities.

Storyboard

Storyboarding is the method of communicating a visual story relating to a specific problem or need. Storyboarding is a preferred method for explaining and learning about the context you are working with. Storyboarding can help you bring a situation to life by showing time-based view of what is happening and exploring the situation. Storyboarding is the next step after you have understood your user’s problems or needs in detail. Storyboarding can help you represent information visually by creating scenarios consisting of problems and needs of users. The advantages of storyboarding are as follows:

• Storyboarding is much preferred method for illustrating anything since pictures are worth more than words
• Storyboarding needs you to have every piece of the story so it makes sure that you grasp everything related to a user’s problems and needs
• Storyboarding is by nature, engaging and therefore capture attention. People respond more to stories than anything else

SCAMPER

SCAMPER is a technique that uses seven kinds of questions to come up with ideas to either build a new product or improve an existing product. SCAMPER expands into Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify/Magnify, Put it to some other use, Eliminate, Reverse/Rearrange. You start by asking questions as below:

• What part of the product can be substituted? It can be specific feature or shape or form or process or place
• What parts of the product can be combined?
• What part of the product can be adapted to serve another purpose?
• What part of the product can be modified or magnified to create more value?
• What part of the product can be put into another use?
• What part of the product can be eliminated to simplify the product?
• What part of the product can be reversed or rearranged to improve the product?

Ideation is at the heart of everything. So, go ahead and use the above mentioned ideation techniques to create a new product or improve an existing one.

“My biggest regrets are the moments that I let a lack of data override my intuition on what’s best for our customers.” — Andrew Mason, Founder of Groupon

What am I missing here? Let me know in the comments, and don’t forget to share your ideas too!

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