How|Now|Wow (Ciao!)

Design is a team sport. Collaboration is something to be approached with care and strategy, and tools. One of my favorite tools is the How/Now/Wow Matrix! I add a “Ciao” on the end for fun. It’ll make sense in a minute.

Prioritization is key to not only saving the personal relationships within the group, but the best way to remain on budget, efficient and focused.

Process

Create a matrix with the x-axis going from “common ideas” to “original ideas,” and the y-axis starting with “easy to implement” and going up to “difficult to implement.”

Put each idea on the plot where it lies under these terms.

Next, add the lines to see what quadrant the ideas fall into.

Now:

Low hanging fruit. These fall under easy to do and are pretty common ideas. Just because they aren’t unique, doesn’t mean they’re not worth doing. It just means they’re not going to rock the user’s world.

How:

On the other side of the matrix are the ideas that are original and innovative but will require a lot of labor to implement. These should be held on for future projects or iterations of the product.

Wow:

These ideas are what will make this product shine! These are ideas that are relatively easy to implement and also stand out as unique features which will add value to the user experience.

Ciao:

These ideas are uninteresting and hard to implement. It’s best to say goodbye to these.

Results!

The benefit of plotting the ideas on the matrix before separating them into quadrants is to prevent bias. No one wants to put their own idea into the “ciao” section, while most of us would love to have ours end up in “wow!”

Some ideas might fall on the line between sections and will require some debate about what category they belong in.

The goal of this exercise is to keep the decision making logical and impersonal while creating focus for the project’s next steps.