Idea Generation
HMWS
For my two ‘how might we’ statements, I was looking to come at the task of designing a reading light in two different directions.
- How might we make reading and working easier in the dark?
First, I looked to come up with a prompt that simply directed people to help solve the problem of making reading easier in the dark. Being a general statement of the problem, this would hopefully come up with some ideas that weren’t really related to a reading light or desk lamp, and focus more on outside-the-box ideas. This prompt was used for a “people don’t want a drill they want a hole in their wall” situation.
2. How might we make lighting more customizable for everyone?
For my second statement, I focused on the lighting side of the problem in order to start developing more ideas that included lights. In my user research, I found that the biggest problem that people had with their lights was that they weren’t versatile enough, whether that meant they couldn’t adjust the light intensity or they found it hard to move or more. These ideas were meant to be more specific to my topic.
Set Up
I set up my brainstorming session in the dorm lounge closest to my room, located in Sanford Hall. This area had a central table, whiteboard, and enough chairs to accommodate the four volunteers in my session.


The four participants were all residents on my floor, who all were in different colleges. There were 2 women and 2 men in my brainstorming session. All of my participants were freshman ages 18–19.
Abbey: College of Design (Architecture)
Michael: Carlson School of Management
Willa: College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences.
Omar: College of Science and Engineering.
The session lasted about an hour. I gave 20–25 minutes to brainstorming time for both of my prompts, 10-15 minutes for my improv games and explanation of the brainstorming session, and 10–15 for idea grouping and voting.
For my materials, all I needed to use were 4 packs of multi-colored Post-it notes, 4 pens/pencils, my notebook for structuring the event, and 4 pieces of 11x17 printer paper for my created improv game.

For my warm up games, my group started off with the game I created which I call ‘Blind Guessing’, which took about 5–7 to play (more info in the next section). From there my group also played the game where you create a story just by saying one word at a time (I don’t know the actual name). that game also took about 5–7 minutes to play.
Warm Up Activity
My original game that I created was a game called Blind Guessing. This is a game where, similar to charades, you have to think of an object (animal, household item, etc.) and draw it out on paper. This game is unique because every person must draw their item at the same time, and the catch is that they cannot look at their paper when they draw, so their drawing becomes nothing like what they thought of.
Everyone gets 30 seconds to draw out their image, then they must put down their writing utensil. After this, everyone passes their papers around the circle and the other members must guess what the person has drawn.
The goal of this game is to get people to be more spontaneous with their drawing and thinking, while also getting people to think outside the box a bit more when guessing what these really bad drawings are.




This image was actually a bat.
We played two round of this game, one where you simply couldn’t look at the paper, and another where you couldn’t look at the paper, but also couldn’t take your pen off the paper.

Brainstorm Session
After finishing the games, we transitioned into generating ideas. We started with a general prompt, just a reading light. During this ten minutes, the group did not really come up with a ton of ideas, and the ideas were all very similar. about 17 ideas were thought out in this period.
After this first prompt, I brought out my first HMW, how might we make reading and working easier in the dark?
The ideas generated during this time were not only larger in quantity, but more creative, my group coming up with a large number of our total ideas. Ideas were of a wide range, from books, all the way to AI.

The second HMW, how might we make lighting more customizable for everyone, was also a great idea generator. People’s ideas were obviously more focused on lighting, but they came up with really creative things, putting up a good deal of ideas in this ten minute segment.

The total number of ideas was 93 for our session. This may have been a little bit lower than I would have liked, but this may have been because I held my session in the morning, and could not provide people with chocolates with almonds or other food. One idea was just literally ‘lamp’.
After we finished our session the group was asked to separate the ideas into separate groups based on which ones they thought went together.



Some of the groups included:
products that already exist
AI themed
Natural light
Small incremental changes
lights that could also function as another object
Beer Themed
IPM: 93 ideas / 4 people
each person averaged 23.25 ideas over 30 minutes.
Per 1 minute, people averaged 1.1625 ideas.
Then, the group was asked to write stars on the product ideas they thought were the best out of the entire 93. Stars on an idea were based on whether the ideas were realistic, if the person would buy the product, or if they thought the product was feasible.



We were left with 24 ideas that were starred.
The top 10 ideas + who came up with them were:
- A glowing work desk -Willa
- Pencils with lightbulbs on the eraser -Willa
- Holographic books -Abbey
- Heat sensitive lights -Abbey
- my personal favorite… Telekinesis -Abbey
- Glowing Clipboard -Michael
- A company that creates a multi-purpose remote for all your lights -Omar
after this point, all the other ideas all had one vote so the group picked these 3
8. Pills that dilate pupils -Michael
9. Glow in the dark contacts -Willa
10. A glowing hat- Willa
Top 10 Ideas










Timeline:
Saturday: hold a brainstorming session with the four people I have.
Sunday: compile the data and start sketching top ten ideas
Monday-Wednesday: create and write the blog post, finish the post
