Building A Scene

Need new ideas? First build your scene.

What?

Actually that should read, Where? Who? When? What? How? Those simple questions are all you need to fill a whiteboard with compelling ideas for your next product or feature. And as we’ve all heard so often these days, our features and products need stories or a point of view. Answer those questions, and you’ll not only get a bunch of ideas, you’ll be building your story at the same time. What a bargin right!

Genre

So films and books can be about anything, but they usually fall into some higher level category (whether or not the author or film maker likes it). Genre’s make it a little easier for the audience to know what they are getting into, but in this case you are the audience so a genre will just help narrow the field a little. So before we begin building a scene for your product, you should try to pick a genre or theme. For the purposes of this article let’s say our genre is grocery shopping.

Grocery Shopping: Where?

Let’s dive into our first W? question: Where.

Our goal with this first question is to start brainstorming a list of wheres. So image we hadn’t picked a genre or theme, our list of wheres could include:

• Movie Theater, House, Busy Street, Car, Wisconsin, Outer Space

Not very helpful huh. Well, maybe those wheres are part of someones cool genre, but today we want to be more specific. Maybe our list could look like this:

• Big Box Store, Corner Market, Farm Stand, Convenience Store

Well that’s a nice list, but it’s not very creative and really only just starts to describe the scene. I think we can do better.

• TYPE: Big Box Store, Corner Market, Farm Stand, Convenience Store
• LOCATION: Urban, Suburban, Countryside, Familiar City, Unfamiliar Place, [insert your relevant Cities, States, or Countries]
• PRICE POINT: Upscale, Budget
• AREA: Parking Lot, Entryway, Aisle, Produce, Dairy, Checkout Line, Service Counter

Hopefully you get the point. For you marketing or product manager’s out there, you probably already know this as a segmentation analysis or something similar. We’re certainly not breaking ground here.

You can go as crazy or as narrow as you want. Maybe you have a very specific problem you are trying to solve? Or maybe you are trying to reimagine an existing product? Or maybe you have no idea what you want to build and are starting from scratch? I suggest going all in for all cases, even if you don’t think it relates to what you hoped your ideas would look like. Besides, this is just a good exercise to go through from time to time if you are that product or marketing person. It’ll also come in handy later on [hint].

Grocery Shopping: Who?

So you might be thinking why am I going through all of this work? Well lets start thinking about our next W? question: Who.

So imagine this is you (or your customer) going about his grocery shopping.

Now imagine THIS is you (or your customer).

See the difference? Any parents out there?

So everything on our list is just a way of twisting the scene. A way of changing the point of view. Maybe you didn’t have a point of view to start with, but if you did, this is a great way to expand your thinking. New ideas will emerge if you change your point of view, even slightly.

Now back to our whos list. Remember, be creative:

• DEMOGRAPHICS: High Wage, Low Wage, Single, Married, With Kids, Elderly, Commuter, Home Owner, Apartment Renter
• PSYCHOGRAPHICS: Dietary Restriction, Environmentally Conscience, Organic, Coupon Cutter, Label Reader, Brand Affinity
• ROLE: Primary Shopper, Running An Errand For Someone, Tagging Along, Fellow Shopper, Shop Employee, Cashier, Bagger, Stock Person, Delivery Person, Maintenance Person, Store Owner, Corporate Staff

See how you can get crazy in a short period of time? And this might even just be scratching the surface. If you are feeling burned out, go ahead and stop here then skip past WHEN. No one will tell on you, I promise. Besides, you really only need two W? questions to set a scene.

Grocery Shopping: When?

Our last W? question: When.

This list is all about describing the situation as it relates to time. Again, be creative:

• TIME OF DAY: Morning, Noon, After Work, Night, Late Night
• DAY: Weekday, Weekend, Before Holiday, On Holiday
• OTHER SPECIFICS: Quick In And Out, In A Hurry, Relaxed, On Your Way To [Blank], A Few Items, A Long List

The list can go on and on.

Now What?

Great question. No really, that’s exactly the question we want to ask next: What.

But first, let’s look at our lists.

Our goal is to build a scene, so we really only need one thing from each list (or just two of the lists if you stopped early). We need to make some decisions. How you do this is up to you and your situation. You could have some other business constraints or conditions that allow you to filter the lists? Or you might have some idea of market opportunity? Or maybe you have a particular skillset or technology to use? But if you’re starting from scratch, just pick some that sound like fun. You can always refine your lists later (or more likely… add to them). And you can even combine items on a list if you want to be really specific.

So let’s say we pick: Big Box Store, With Kids, and Weekend

Wait, notice what just happened? You just described the scene to your story. It’s the start to your elevator pitch (it also sounds a little like the board game Clue).

Don’t get too excited though, you still have more thinking to do. You need to ask the question, What.

What is unique about a Big Box Store? What are it’s important attributes? What do parents feel like when they have their kids along? What do kids feel like when they are dragged to the store? What happens on weekends in a grocery store? What do people generally have happening on the weekends? What else?

I chose to illustrate an example of our new questions in a mind map, but you can just continue making lists or use another organization method (I happen to be partial to post it notes!). Notice what question we didn’t ask though? We didn’t ask what solution could exist. We are just trying to further describe the scene. So make sure your map doesn’t include solutions or ideas. Only facts or assumed facts.

Ideas

The time has finally come to generate ideas, but make sure you’re in the right mindset. If you are a visual person, it might help to imagine yourself in the scene you created. If you are artistic (scribbles are just fine) you could draw out your scene. Or it may even be an option to go find your scene somewhere and experience it first hand.

Once you find your scene, start imagining: How it could be better. How could you change it? How could you help? How would your idea be better than what others have tried? How could you make money? How could someone find out about your solution?

Or even better, ask: How can this solution affect others in my scene, or other scenes?

Notice a trend. You’re asking How.

Why?

Why is really the combination of all of these questions.

Why = Who + Where + When + What + How

This is your story. You may have to create several scenes to fully describe the opportunity. But the deeper you go, the more rich your story will be. Short stories are great. So are full length novels. You pick the right amount of depth for your story/product/idea. It can also be fun to just flip one detail at a time in even the most well developed stories. You never know what connections you’ll find. Bottom line: just try it, you can always add more or change things later.

This article is my attempt at “just trying it”, so please comment or contact me (@jonalling) to discuss. I’d love to hear about your experiences using this process, and what your categories look like. I think it would be fun to have a tool or graphic to help guide individuals through it in the future, so stay tuned for that.