Startups — Let’s get doing than talking
There are many reasons that made me quit my corporate life to become an entrepreneur. One of the biggest nightmares of my old lifestyle are those endless meetings that get you absolutely nowhere. You would sometimes feel like you are back to the starting point after hours of debating and back and forths. I am a big fan of ideation and exploration — but not those no agenda meetings that run data and graphs and predictions — especially presentations and meetings that have the word strategy in it. It is my real good luck that I landed in the discipline of human centred design thinking, thank god its design thinking and doing, rather than design talking and not doing. I might be a millennial — we have a bad rap of being socially reclusive — but I do value human interaction that is intellectual, stimulating, and ideologically diverse yet inclusive.
It was early 2015 when I participated in the Global Service Jam a non-profit initiative by WorkPlayExperience founded by Markus Edgar Hormeß and Adam StJohn Lawrence. In our edition, there were over 700 participants from around the world. In the 48 hours, we were supposed to build a prototype based on the global theme that was revealed. That is when I got hooked to yet another design journey with Service Design Thinking. My life was never the same. I had a chance to later interact and learn from Adam himself.
Before every jam, Adam and Markus shared a simple set of tips that would help us rapidly iterate and learn through the next two days. My most favourite of all is ‘Doing not Talking’. So the key message here is to not sit around and keep talking on what can be done, but rather quickly try something and go out there are test it out. It is really helpful to get quick feedback — because the customer or end user is able to see — a prototype is not an elegant and perfect version — and sometimes even touch, feel and interact with the idea rather than just hear it. It sort of bridges the gap from your mind to mouth to their ears to mind. Now both of you get to see the same thing, feel the same thing and experience the same thing.
When you feel like you want to learn something and gain feedback, data is not the only thing that will come to rescue. However amazing the concept looks in our head and on the drawing board its true reality test is when it is in the hands of the customer. Dan and Chip Heath talk about — in their book Decisive — an experiment conducted by Saras Sarasvathy a professor at the University of Virginia, Darden School of Business. She found that entrepreneurs rely mostly on real-time feedback — they would rather go sell than sit and do extensive market research. Entrepreneurs have a high preference for testing rather than planning — no wonder, after just a year of being an entrepreneur I can’t imagine toggling back to the corporate mindset.
Somehow as companies grow into big corporates and entrepreneurs turn into executives, this reliance of data — which is more of thinking than doing — becomes a thing. With predictability, one gains control, and with more control, things become less risky — or so we think. A couple of years ago, my ex-boss was asked to facilitate a strategy meeting with senior executives and leaders in Australia. These sessions would usually be loaded with presentations, graphs, charts and colourful post-its. There would be no dearth for ideas, perspectives and of course massive-egos, politics, and strong point of views join the party too. This time though he had chosen to take a Lego serious playset to facilitate the session. All the leaders had to build their vision with the Lego blocks and explain their thinking to their peers later. What do you suppose happened? It was indeed one of the best strategic meetings any of them had ever been to.
So it is not hard to imagine that anyone — be you a business mogul, subject matter expert, design expert or a startup founder, you can use the power of showing your idea. Here are a few ways to show your ideas,
#1 Paper Prototypes: These are my favourite kind of prototyping. You can draw up and cut shapes of how your prototype would look like. I advocate using giant markers even for tiny screens — just so participants are not tempted to cramping their canvases with features and wordy paragraphs. For instance, if you are designing a mobile app on the iOS platform — then you can print out templates of the iPhone (1, 3, 3G, 3GS, 4, 4S, 5, 5C, 5S, 6, 6 Plus, 6S, 6s Plus, SE, 7, 7 Plus, 8, 8 Plus, X, XS, XS Max, XR — Phew! I was just kidding) and get drawing on how your app would look like.
#2 Service and Experience Prototypes: This type of prototypes are built and placed in a context — place, situation, and condition — in which the user would actually use this solution. All the product and service touch points are also put into place — including all key human and digital interaction. Then the prototyping team observes the users interactions with the system at different touch points. For instance, like a lemonade stand prop up by kids if we can create kiosks that perform a task — place a person who would for the day play the role of a parcel or courier service receptionist — you can observe the kind of people who walk to the kiosk and the type of questions they ask or the type of service they want to avail.
#3 Mock-ups: Build a scale model of what you envision and then walk the user or listener through the whole experience. Widely used by architects and interior designers. It is a wonderful way to see how the audience perceives what is there without your intervention or explanation, then later you move in to explain what you are thinking, and go back to the drawing board to bridge if there is too much of a gap in perception.
What are your most favourite ways to test out your idea?
