The Effectiveness of Sacrificial Concepts I’ve Seen
An IDEO practice that presents visuals of extreme, usually unfeasible and unviable concepts to potential users to elicit strong reactions and responses that help us more deeply understand the user and the whys of their behavior.
What are Sacrificial Concepts?
More and more blogs and videos these days already cover what this method is and how to do it. So I will not delve into that here. Instead I will present three examples I’ve touched while working at FordLabs and show parts that were effective and mistakes we’ve learned from.
If my intro paragraph was not clear enough, watch this 8.5-minute video for an introduction to Sacrificial Concepts:
Project 1: Features Car Owners Would Subscribe To
This project was where I first heard of and learned about Sacrificial Concepts. IDEO had been collaborating with Ford to help develop ideas for more engaging features in their car owner app back in 2018. I was put on a separate but related and somewhat extended version of their project in the middle of their timeline. So I inherited a lot of their research materials and got to dig into their methods.
Here the IDEO team created about 14 different visuals. I don’t know if all were used or how they were all presented during a user interview. But there were some useful insights generated from the reactions they invoked.
Here are 3 of the 14 concepts I inherited:
Effectiveness
I didn’t show all 14 concepts but most were great examples of being “out there” enough to actually create strong reactions. And that is key to this technique. Stronger reactions will allow you to hear clearer whys and why nots.
If you were to show ideas that are average and almost normal. You tend to get weaker reactions such as “Sure, I like that.” It’s not a problem to get those reactions. But you’ll find that when asking “Why do you like that?” the explanations tend to be less insightful into the reasons behind their thinking and behavior. “Well, it’s nice to get a free swag bag and a free ticket to the show.” Of course, it is. Who doesn’t like free stuff?
Learnings
Assuming the team showed all 14 concepts, I’m not convinced it’s beneficial to use that many in a typical round of research. I usually try for as many unique ideas you can generate that are different enough from each other yet relevant to the project scope. That usually turns out to 3–7 ideas, which is plenty.
Secondly, the visuals do not need to be at this level of fidelity. They may appear simple but look closer and notice how there are shadows for buttons and a background skyline to add dimension to the images. You don’t need to fuss over visual perfection. The concepts you draw should be a drawing with minimal text, but it can be as scratchy as stick figures as long as it gets the idea across. You will see an example of this in the next project.
Project 2: Decreasing Customer Dissatisfaction During “Special Order” Waiting Period
Any kind of custom order usually takes longer to produce than a standard order. Why? It’s not using the efficiency of mass production economics anymore. You need to specify how this one order is different and make sure it’s created correctly. And now since this is almost one-of-a-kind, you have to give it extra attention and ensure it doesn’t get lost or damaged during shipping, and that it gets shipped to the right destination amongst all your other orders.
In this “instant” day and age, patience run on shorter fuses. So how do you make their waiting experience less painful? To understand our customers’ emotional journey, what specifically about their experience makes it painful, and to gauge what types of experiences might improve that journey, we decided to try a few sacrificial concepts.
Effectiveness
We whipped these 3 ideas up in a brainstorming session, drew them up in 20 minutes, and were ready to show in our next user interview in a couple of hours. It doesn’t have to take a lot to create visuals. As long as they sufficiently get your vague idea across.
That’s the other point. It doesn’t have to be 100% super clear what the idea is. Part of the fun of sacrificial concepts is also having your users tell you what they think it is. This is a crucial part of the process. The first thing I always ask is, “Please describe what you’re looking at and tell me what you think this is.” Many of my stakeholders get frustrated and ask me, “Why don’t you just cut to the chase and explain to them what it is and get their reactions?”
For me, part of understanding why users see things a particular way is understanding what they see. Sometimes it can be very different from what you thought you drew. They’re looking at and describing it to you through their lens, backgrounds, and experiences. With their imagination left freely to play and create whatever they think they’re looking at, they may totally hate or totally love that image even more than what your original idea could spark. This in turn gives you richer reactions and a deeper understanding of the experiences they draw from.
It could also turn out that their down-to-earth and realistic personality turns your sketches into a very not extreme concept. So if they’ve described an average concept, then you can add some color into their imagination and explain a few details that they don’t yet see in the visuals.
Learnings
The third concept we created was a little drab. It goes back to the “Who doesn’t want free stuff?” reaction. We did however receive some interesting reactions to the Mustang Club where some showed disinterest in socializing with strangers in a club but wanted to bring their family and close friends to the track to show off. This showed that it’s the people that matter most that they wanted to share their special order experience with and other people don’t matter.
Project 3: Understanding the Cab Experience
Cabs have been (prejudicely) known to provide the worst rider experience now that we have easily-accessible luxurious and friendly Ubers. But cabs will get you there faster (at least that’s what people think). So what is it about a cab rides that are so bad and what will make it better?
Partnering with IDEO, the collective team brainstormed a ton of ideas and 7 concepts were birthed by an extremely talented IDEO designer overnight. We showed them during our interviews:
Effectiveness
The visuals were clean and simple and easy to churn out in one night. Most of it was clear and easy to digest. There was even a bit of humor in some of them by being literal with the sketches (i.e. backseat driver). With this more comic strip look, it was easier and even enjoyable to consume.
Learnings
Looking back, a few of these concepts were not as radical as we had hoped. Who wouldn’t like to personalize their ride in the cab? Who wouldn’t want to be a backseat driver and give the driver your preferred route? The reactions were the obvious, “Yes, I’d like that but I’d feel bad doing that to the driver.”
We could’ve also pared down on the amount of text for the user to read on some of these visuals (i.e. magic hail). This potentially added to interview fatigue for the user during an already long 1.5 hour interview.
Wrap It Up
Here are summarized tips for your concept creation and research facilitation:
- 3–7 ideas
- Different enough from each other
- Related to project scope
- Extreme or crazy enough for strong reactions
- Simple and quick to create
- Less text, more picture
- Ask users what they think they’re looking at, describe your idea only when they’re at a lost
The most difficult parts of creating sacrificial concepts is making sure that they are radical, inspiring, or innovative enough to actually draw out the reactions you need. What I’ve found most helpful is getting the whole team of cross-disciplinary roles in a room to hash out as many crazy ideas as possible then consolidating them into the perfectly balanced visuals.
When done right, I’ve had positive experiences using sacrificial concepts to draw out richer reactions that explain behaviors and thinking, which helped our research go deeper.
