Blue Sky Ideation

Summary

After user research, I decided to look into organizational products for people when they sleep. I noticed most people keep their phones on their beds a ledge overnight, and sometimes people keep other things nearby such as food, glasses, or even a book. To expand on the topic I have decided, I will be gathering a group of people together for a brainstorming session. The effectiveness of a brainstorming session has been studied for years, and while the number of ideas produces is less than if the same number of people were to be independently making ideas, as seen in Paulus’s paper Groups, Teams, and Creativity: The Creative Potential of Idea-generating Groups, brainstorming has been shown to enhance idea generation through diversity within the group as seen by Paulus, Jackson, and Gardenswartz & Rowe.

While working on my own individual ideas, I noticed I was constraining myself to ideas realistic to fabrication due to a background in mechanical engineering. This produced simpler ideas that could be more quickly moved onto manufacturing, but it restricted the production of more ridiculous ideas which could then be morphed into new ideas that in the end would be realistic. Because of this, there is a need for my personal idea generation to expand on a less technical influence of ideas such as a group setting.

By bringing in other people to the challenge, I got a variety of different backgrounds and mindsets. Some of the people there did not take it as seriously, which resulted in unique ideas, but without the motivation to produce ideas, they did not produce many. This showed the difficulty in bringing in outsiders into a group brainstorming session because depending on people who are not responsible for the output of the session can cause disruptions and lack of motivation and focus.

Individual Idea Generation

How might we make a product to help people store objects overnight close to a bed for students, people with lofted beds, and for small bedrooms.

For this prompt, I produced 30 ideas for a solution to this problem as shown below.

New Warm-Up Game

My inspiration for this game comes from the game truth or dare, specifically dare, where I noticed how much effort people put into creating creative dares to make their friends do something humorous. I thought this could make people more empathetic by focusing on other people performing dares, and the desire to make someone do something stupid would motivate them.

The idea behind the game is to flip a coin onto a piece of paper and draw a shape around where it landed. After that, the person who flipped the coin must make up a rule in case someone lands in that space. For this brainstorming session, I started with playing the game with the full rules, but as it took too long, I only had people make up rules. What I have noticed is people will put more effort into being creative if it can make someone do something entertaining, such as holding hands with someone or making them do sprints in the hallway.

Some of the dares through this game were: wear Joe’s hat, Joe runs sprints, propose to someone, speak like a super-villain, and compliment someone aggressively.

Session Organization

For my participants, I asked a couple people from the Quidditch club’s board of officers. We meet every week in a conference room, so there would be a good location to do this. Additionally, the board is made up of a variety of people, so there should be good diversity in ideas.

Max is a sophomore economics student. Sarah is a junior computer science student. Nadja is a junior kinesiology student. Lastly, Matt is a senior mechanical engineering student. Personality-wise, this group is varied with people who are more outgoing, more reserved, and more technical, so I expected good diversity in the ideas generated.

The setting was a Coffman Memorial Union Board room which was bright and had a large window showing Northrop mall. It was done after our weekly board, which followed the intramural games and competition team practice, so it appeared most of the people were exhausted from the long day.

The warm up games I used were zip zap zop, word ball, look at me, and then my original game.

I cut the session at about 20–25 minutes because it became apparent that everyone was exhausted from the day, and ideas had mostly stopped being generated. I wanted to keep their attention and focus the best I can to get through the sorting and voting without them getting too distracted or wanting to leave. The total amount of ideas generated was 36, which was an IPM of 0.3.

Overall, I noticed there was a struggle of people’s motivation from the start, and as the process went on, some people started loafing around or talking with people in the group which lead to a loss in productivity. To keep people focused, I drew a few additional ideas from my notebook down and presented them in the same way we were presenting ideas, and hung them up on the wall.

Sorting and Voting

The categories from the sorting is as follows:

Shelves and Bins: products that focused on having shelves or bins

Novelty and Decoration: ideas that focused on aesthetic appeal more than function

Moving Components: mechanical systems with movement involved

Small Grippers: small products that hold onto items

Ceiling Fixture: products that are connected to the ceiling

Bed Frame: products that are connected to the bed frame

Space Saving and Compact: products that minimize used space

Organic Products: ideas that involve living creatures

Pillow and Mattress: ideas that involve the products people sleep with or on

The voting used stickers where green was realistic, purple was cheapest to produce, and yellow was most interesting.

It is difficult to say if the participants thought green was realistic or unrealistic since all the ideas involving animals received at least one realistic vote.

Top Ideas

The first four ideas I made during the personal idea generation.

The sliding shelf is a moveable shelve that can be pushed up or down to create space, and will be mounted on the wall.

The head case is a head shaped container for a slot at the mouth for a phone, an anatomically accurate face for glasses, and a slot on top for a glass of water or other small objects. This could be placed on a shelf, ledge, or bed post.

The under bed shelf is a shelf that connects to the frame of the bed, so someone can reach under the bed and place objects there.

The adjustable hanging bin is a bin attached to the ceiling which can be pulled or lifted up, and a cord will retract or extend depending on its movement.

The elastic mesh wall is a grid of elastic strapped attached to the wall where objects can be shoved into the straps and be stored on the wall.

The under mattress insert shelf is a shelf that attached to the bed by inserting the flap under the mattress and the weight of the mattress will hold the shelf in place.

The next four ideas all game from Sarah during the brainstorming session.

The inflatable night stand is a stand which can be deflated during the day so it does not take up much space.

The layered shelves are a stack of shelves which can be attached to some part of the bed frame.

The stuffed animal case is a stuffed animal with a pouch to store small items safely.

The bed frame clips are a set of clips that have different grips for grabbing different items such as phone or water bottle.