A 7 year old’s journey to build grit through lessons in design thinking and entrepreneurship…with some help from her mom. Think of it like Product Management 101, but with a 1st grader.
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A recap
If you are just joining Elena’s journey, stop! Start with Part 1 so you can catch up and learn about (1) why I’m doing this, (2) why Elena’s doing this, and (3) what she’s done so far.
In Part 6, Elena learned:
- The best way to come up with a good idea is to come up with lots of ideas and throw out the bad ones later.
- To come up with the most ideas, use “brainswarming” instead of group or individual brainstorming.
- While there are many different solution possibilities, Elena found that hers and mine fell into two broad categories: (1) making good dreams and (2) protecting against bad dreams.
We also had an unexpected Part 6 and a half, where Elena’s little sister Luisa joined in on the fun and did her own round of Crazy 8s.
Preparing to prototype.
The next milestone in Elena’s Design Thinking journey is to narrow down to the best solution that achieves Elena’s Ideal State. As a reminder, Elena’s Ideal State is:
Elena, and now Luisa too, need to build some prototypes so they can test, learn, and narrow.
With sketches in hand, the girls head to Michael’s to pick up some prototyping supplies.
“Let’s go this way!” says Luisa as she walks toward the bead aisle.
Elena doesn’t move. “Boys won’t like gems. We want something boys and girls will like.”
While it is great that Elena has her customers in mind, she is making a big assumption about what boys like and don’t like. There are lots of different types of beads and lots of different types of boys.
The problem with assumptions, stereotypes, and other blanket statements is that they shoot down potentially good ideas and narrow your thinking without any data to support it. Yes, Elena and Luisa are in the narrowing phase, but they are supposed to narrow using data and informed insights, not assumptions.
“Good job thinking about what your customers will want. What about this blue and purple geode here? It looks sort of dreamy, like it could make a great seed for planting a dream. Why don’t we do a test to see if boys and girls could like this?” I ask.
“Let’s test it out!” exclaims Elena. She puts them in the cart and the girls pick out some other magical-looking beads.
The girls go down every aisle putting rocks, ribbon, foam sheets, and other materials in the cart.
Go for good, not perfect.
Elena finds an amazing piece of fuzzy rainbow fabric, but hesitates before putting it in the cart.
“I don’t know how to sew,” Elena says. Her mind is starting to work out the details of turning these materials into solutions.
“That’s ok,” I reply. “These are going to be prototypes. They are just for testing, so they don’t need to be perfect. They aren’t the real thing you will sell.”
This alleviates her concern for now, but I’m not just saying this to make Elena feel better.
Prototypes don’t need to be perfect. In fact, they shouldn’t be perfect. They just need to be good enough to test and learn. You don’t want to spend a lot of time making a perfect prototype that ends up being scrapped because it failed to solve the Customer Problem.
Prove out the concept first, then invest in improving it.
Watch out for distractions.
Michaels has the ultimate impulse aisle on the way to check out. Elena and Luisa know they are at Michaels for their prototypes, not for toys or candy, but they really want to put a few of these items in the cart.
It can be tempting to throw in tangentially related or completely unrelated things into your prototype. You’re already making the effort to design a prototype and get people to test it. Why not test this other thing you might do later?
Resist the temptation! Stay focused on your current Customer Problem, Ideal State, and assumptions. The expanding scope is a distraction that takes up more of your time and resources.
If two children could resist the temptation, so can you.
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Want to know what Elena does next?
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You can also join this email list for an early bird announcement of the launch of Elena’s yet to be determined solution. She is still a ways away from this, but it’s never too early to start building your Kickstarter list!
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