Idea Generation pt.2

John Courington
Nov 6 · 6 min read

How Might We…?:

Set Up: Describe the overall brainstorming session set up with text and photos. What warm up games did you do?

Participant 1: Grant O is a sophomore Mechanical Engineering student from Eagan, Minnesota. He does not participate in any extracurriculars, other than intramural soccer. Rather, he enjoys spending time with friends on the weekends and study 8–12 hours every day.

Participant 2: Andy K is a sophomore Psychology student from Eagan, Minnesota. He joined Catan and Rock Climbing club this year, as well as does intramural football and soccer. Andy enjoys playing video games and hanging out with friends when he gets free time.

Participant 3: Kennan M is a junior Civil Engineering student from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He does not participate in any extracurriculars, outside of intramural soccer. Kennan enjoys playing FIFA and hanging out with friends, but also likes to spend time reading.

Participant 4: Lars O is a freshman Marketing major from St. Paul, Minnesota. He participates in intramural soccer and made it clear that he is in the Cabbage Club. He enjoys hanging out with friends and playing video games in his free time.

To replicate a round table, I held the brainstorming session in Andy and Grant’s apartment. Their couches were set up around a table so everybody could each other and I placed each idea on a blank wall behind one of the couches. Every idea was written and sketched on 4x6 inch post-it notes and placed on the wall in a grid format. I scheduled the brainstorming session to be an hour total. I ran 20 minutes of warm up games to make sure everybody was in the right frame of mind. Then, I split the rest of the brainstorming session into 10 minutes intervals, using my first time period as open ended idea generation. After that, my remaining 30 minutes was delegated to my three specific “How might we…?” statements. In regards to my warm up games, I had my participants play Story Spine, Zip-Zap-Zop, Word Ball, and, my name game, Cradle-to-the-Grave.

Warm Up:

Along with Zip-Zap-Zop, Story Spine, and Word Ball, I incorporated my new game, Cradle-to-the-Grave, into the warm up. I was not able to get any photos or images because we were playing. However, it is fairly easy to explain. The idea of Cradle-to-the-Grave is to reenact different things that people of different ages do on a daily basis. There are six rounds: baby, child, teen, young adult, adult, and old person. Each round every person has to act like a baby, then a teen, then a young adult, and so on, until every body has died or finished the old person round.

Brain Storm Session:

The brainstorming session began with the statement “How might we innovate a toilet?” A very general question that got the ball rolling. From their, every ten minute I changed the prompt to focus on a separate HMW.

There were a total number of 102 ideas in 40 minutes of brainstorming, equating to 2.55 ideas per minute for the session. The voting criteria was based upon the color of the dot. The voting criteria was based upon creativity (Green dot), Feasibility (Pink dot), and novelty (Yellow dot).

Each idea was categorized, by the four participants, into eight categories:

Technology:

Environmental and Sustainability:

Culture and Values:

Toilet Innovations:

Brush Innovations:

Sprays:

Goofy Ideas:

Random:

After the ideas were categorized and the brainstorming session was over, I took the time to sort through all the ideas and found the top 10 that I thought had the most opportunity or the largest area for growth.

Because each idea may be difficult to see, I will review each one. The list bellow will read left to right and top to bottom from the image above. I will also label who made the idea.

  1. (Grant) Interchangeable brush heads: The toilet brush handle has detachable toilet brush heads for different cleaning purposes.
  2. (Kennan) Spinning toilet brush head: A toilet brush that has a spinning brush head that can rotate both ways.
  3. (Grant) Subsidized cleaning products: Cleaning products in general would be made free to the public, making a very clean environment for all.
  4. (Lars) Flushable toilet liner: A toilet liner that sits in the rim of the toilet and catches the grim that builds up around the bowl of the toilet. After a certain amount of use, it gets flushed away.
  5. (Andy) Non-Stick Bowl: A bowl that has a chemical or a material to keep grim from sticking to it.
  6. (Kennan) Cleaner on a track: An automated cleaning device that navigates around a track inside the toilet bowl, cleaning after every use.
  7. (Andy) Nano-Spiders: Small nano spiders that clean the toilet after every use.
  8. (Grant) Retractable Toilet Brush: A toilet brush that has a retractable handle.
  9. (Andy) Toilet Gun: A toilet brush that has a normal brush head and a gun that squirts soap in the toilet.
  10. (Kennan) Toilet Tunes: A toilet brush that plays music as you clean the toilet.

Top 10 Ideas:

Timeline:

10/31/19 — Generate HMWs that best represent opportunities or problems, as well as creating games and activities to stimulate the brain.

11/1/19 — Begin Brainstorming Session

11/2/19 — Review ideas from previous assignments, picking ideas to go through later.

11/3/19 — Finalize top 10 ideas

11/4/19 — Make presentations slides for each idea

11/5/19 Draft Blog post

11/6/19 — Finalize Blog Post

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