Idea Generation Pt.2

Elia Krisetya
Nov 2 · 5 min read

How Might We Statements

I chose two how might we statements from my previous blog post. Each dealt with a different problem, and were different enough that it would evoke very different solutions. I rephrased the statements to make them easier and more general, so that more ideas could be generated.

“College students need a way to stay awake and study without waking their roommates.”

“Humans need a portable light that is soothing in low light.”

Set up

I chose the biggest flat surface I could find in my house. That turned out to be my dining room table. There were walls on all sides so I had a ton of room to put up everyone's’ drawings. I got a bunch of scrap paper and cut them in 1/4ths. The post it notes were a little too small to draw on. I also got a bunch of different color sharpies. I cut a ton of little pieces of masking tape to secure the drawings to the wall.

Warm up

I took some drama classes in high school. In that class we played a ton of improv games. One of my favorites was a game called freeze. There are two people on “stage” and they improv a scene. Someone in the crowd yells freeze and tags in, they can start a whole new scene, but they have to take up the position the other person was in. I took this game but did it in a sit-down setting. We went around in a circle and acted out a scene. The catch is everyone has to start their sentence with the next letter of the alphabet. On top of this we played one other games from class and one game that I knew of. We played wordball, and concentration. It was a lot of fun, and in addition to warming everyone up it broke the ice.

Brainstorming Session

Once we finished the warmups I laid out the rules for the brainstorming session. They had a great time calling each other out on production blocking, even when it wasn’t really production blocking. I also told them that we were aiming to product quantity not quality, and that they also needed to produce about 100–200 ideas. At first they thought that was a ridiculous number, but it helped them to have something to aim for. I started with the general idea, “humans need a way to create light.” After about 10 minutes I ended the first session. I heard one of them say, hey we did pretty good. I moved on to the second prompt, “College students need a way to stay awake and study without waking their roommates.” and finally “Humans need a portable light that is soothing in low light.” Towards the end of 30 minutes they started to slow down on the idea creation process. I reminded them of different ways to spur more ideas, such as pretending you’re someone else, or designing a product that achieves the exact opposite effect. They came up with 117 ideas in 30 minutes. That equates to about 0.78 IPM, I really didn’t have time to come up with ideas, so excluding me the IPM was about 0.975.

I then told them that they needed to categorize all of the ideas without talking. One contestant had to go to the bathroom so only three of them categorized. The categories that they came up with were clothing, transportation, outdoors, glasses, and umbrellas.

When everything was done and said I gave everyone 10 pieces of colored masking tape to vote on the 10 ideas they thought were best. The voting ended up like this,

Matius: 15votes

Svea: 8votes

Karin: 7votes

Alice: 8 Votes

Elia: 2Vote

The only idea that got more than 2 votes was Matius’ idea. The rest were all votes of 2.

The most voted for idea

Top 10 Ideas

Timeline

11/01: Finish all how might we statements

11/02: Set up in the morning

11/02: Warm up with group in the afternoon

11/02: Brainstorm right after warm up

11/03: Start drawing the top 10 ideas

11/04: Finish drawing Ideas and scan into medium

11/05: Write up medium blog and post

    Elia Krisetya

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