Idea Generation Part 2
“How might we …” Statements:
The following are three different “how might we …” statements that best represent the top problems and opportunities for the pill organizer product or service:
- How might we give people with disabilities more independence and ability in taking and remembering to take necessary medication?
- How might we make bringing medication on the go an easy, subtle, and aesthetically pleasing process?
- How might we remind individuals to take their necessary medications?
These statements represent many of the problems that different users for pill organizers face that my group had discussed in past blog presentations. I want to note that while these are three specific statements, through my market and user research as well as discussion, each individual has a unique need and problem for using a pill organizing method based on their condition and medications, so there are many other, unique and different problems statements specific to the pill organizer product.
Brainstorming Session Set up:
This brainstorming session will be held at my apartment in my living room. I have a table that fits four people around it perfectly, so everyone will be sitting at this table during the brainstorming session. My apartment is centrally located for my brainstorming session participants to get to, and the living room is a very quiet space, so it is a great space to do my brainstorming session.
The four participants in my brainstorming session are:
- Emma: a senior graduating after this semester (winter 2019) who is majoring in journalism and political science. Emma was raised in Los Alamos, New Mexico and moved to Minneapolis for school when she was 18. Emma is currently working a student position at the Minnesota Daily.
- Larson: a senior graduating next year (spring 2020) who is majoring in economics. Raised in Chanhassen, Minnesota, Larson has many midwestern and Minneapolis influences. Larson is currently unemployed and focusing on being a full-time student.
- Trevor: a 20 year old who was raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota and attended Washburn High School. Trevor did not pursue any higher education after high school and works at a golf course and enjoys snowboarding and hanging out with friends in his free time.
- Emily: a senior who is graduating in 2021 who is going to school to be a teacher. Emily was raised in Franklin, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Emily works for Student Unions & Activities at the University of Minnesota and has a very busy schedule throughout the week.
The following schedule is how I intend to spend my time during the brainstorming session on Friday, November 1st beginning at 4:00PM:
4:00PM: participants arrive
4:10PM: I explain the three “how might we …” statements to the participants so they understand the problems and opportunities for ideation
4:15PM: start warm-up activities
4:30PM: immediately after warm-up activity is done, start brainstorming session
4:50PM: bring participants together to sort ideas and vote on ideas
5:00PM: conclude brainstorming session and thank participants for their time in helping me with my assignment
Original Warm-up Activity:
For my brainstorming session, I had my participants do two different warm-up activities, one that I was taught in class and an original warm-up activity that I thought of. The first activity was “story spine.” I organized the participants into a standing circle, and each participant added to a story by using the phrases, in this order: once upon a time…, and everyday…, until one day…, and because of that…, and because of that…, and ever since that day… I had my participants do this activity two times before the other activity because this specific warm-up activity does not take that much time and gets people thinking and active.
The second activity that I had my participants do is something that I’m naming “translated untangle.” This activity is an iteration of a warm-up activity I have seen in the past. Essentially, participants all stand in a close-knit circle and start holding two different participants hands that are not directly next to them. This game is played by working as a team to untangle each other while continuing to hold hands and then turn the circle into a full, untangled circle. The way that I had my participants do this game was by giving each participant a turn to tell another participant what their next move should be. The trick with this game is that the individual telling the other person what to do should tell the other person to do anything that is NOT what they were told. An example of this is:
“Turn around fully so you can move to the other side of the circle”
“Ok, I’m going to twist my left arm so I don’t fully turn around and then just move out of the way for the next person to move”
The new meaning to this game is that it is more than being untangled and working as a team to do this. There is an additional, individual thinking component to this warm-up and that is that each individual needs to think about what they are going to based off of the opposite or different action that their teammate requested. This stimulates creative thinking and makes individuals think on the spot.
The following pictures are of the participants having fun and thinking through our warm-up activities:




Brainstorming Session:
The warm-up activities were a fun way for the participants to both engage with each other and feel comfortable with each other as well as stimulate creative energies and thinking.
After these activities, we moved on to the brainstorming session. Overall, my participants were slow to start as none of them are design students and when I asked them if they had ever done ideation or a brainstorming session, none of them had experience. The following images are of my participants brainstorming, writing their ideas down with a small sketch, and displaying the idea to the other participants:



To be completely honest, this was a lengthy brainstorming session for these participants. I started using different prompts similar to the ones that were asked in class. The brainstorming prompts that I used were:
- “Think of a pill organizer that would be a bad idea” — this captures the negative brainstorming and problem reversal concept (they truly came up with some bad ideas, for example, “pill organizer rope”)
- “Look at the following words and ideate based off of them” — this captures the brute think and random words concept (the words I displayed for my participants were pole, champagne, top, beans, angel, student, lips, salmon, lungs, gasoline, tub, fox, chin)
After the 20 minute long brainstorming session, my participants came up with the following collage of ideas:

The participants and I all looked at the ideas as a whole, and then I explained that we are going to sort them into categories in silence. This process did not take a lot of time, and the following images are of the participants moving different ideas:


Lastly, each participant voted on the ideas that they liked the best for a pill organizer product. I intended to use stickers, but Target Express in Dinkytown did not sell any stickers when I asked an employee, so my resources were low. I ended up having my participants mark their ideas with an “X” using a neon highlighter. The following pictures are of the very chaotic looking categories that the ideas were organized into, with the picture on the right being after participants marked their 5 favorite ideas with an “X”:


Overall results of the brainstorming session are:
- My participants came up with 71 different ideas
- The IPM for this session was 71 ideas/20 minutes/4 people = 0.8875
- The major categories after organizing were forms and shapes, clothing, house wear, unique/random, and outrageous
- The voting criteria that was used was to “vote on an idea that you think would work for our specific problem statements”
The top 14 ideas from this brainstorming session were:
- Key chain pill organizer (Emma)
- Bracelet pill organizer (Emily)
- Can’t start care unless you take your pills (Trevor)
- Clap activated pill organizer (Trevor)
- Arm chair pill organizer (Emma)
- Collar pill organizer (Emily)
- Flower pot pill organizer (Emma)
- Scale pill organizer (Larson)
- Heart shaped pill organizer (Emma)
- Pill mug (Emma)
- Watch pill organizer (Emily)
- Coffee mug pill organizer (Trevor)
- Stuffed animal pill organizer (Emily)
- Make up bag pill organizer (Emma)
The following image show the ideas that were given an “X”:

While the following ideas were not voted on by my participants, I wanted to note some ideas that I thought were personally interesting:
- Candle pill organizer (Larson)
- Phone case pill organizer (Trevor)
- Pill belt organizer (Emma)
The picture below is the idea cards for these ideas that were interesting to me:

Many great ideas came out of this brainstorming session, and it was interesting to see new ideas that I have not yet thought of. Something else that I found very interesting was watching my participants iterate off of the other participants ideas as well as ideas of their own. An example of this is looking at the ideas at the end of the brainstorming session and seeing that together, my participants thought of a bracelet pill organizer, a lanyard pill organizer, and a key chain pill organizer. This was a very fun learning experience for me to run this brainstorming session.
Top 10 Ideas:
Based on the NUF principles of being New, Useful, and Feasible, the top 10 ideas that I have are:
- Key chain pill organizer
- Dog collar pill organizer
- Snack storage pill organizer
- Removable cubes pill organizer
- Caterpillar pill organizer
- Car does not start until user opens pill organizer
- Watch pill organizer
- Motion sensor opening pill organizer
- Phone case pill organizer
- Flower pot pill organizer
The following are visual concept images of my top 10 ideas:





Timeline:

