Idea Generation pt. 2
How Might We — Problem Statements
Using the problem statements created in Assignment three (listed below), the task was to form the statement into a question that could be asked to an audience, to provoke idea generation.
People need a true garden hose multi-tool. The need to switch from a sprinkler to a nozzle, and back again can be frustrating, especially with how hard it can be, with the current connector design.
The current nozzle is set up as a general solution to a lot of very specific problems, but there are better solutions out there for each specific problem. In order to make a relevant nozzle product, it will be necessary to address these specific problems.
Homeowners without lawns need a more realistic reason to use their hose. If you don’t have a lawn, or at least the need to take care of it, this significantly lowers the need for a garden hose. There could be other needs lying in this problem that are yet to be thought of.
Consumers with large amounts of land need a better way to tend to their land because not everyone can afford to spend the money on an in-ground sprinkler system. For users with large amounts of land to tend to, but don’t have the money to drop on a fancy sprinkler system, they could use a better or more efficient way to water their lawns.
Although these problem statements had been applicable at the time being, I have since realized that I needed to broaden my perspective, and so I decided to come up with one more problem statement that could fit a bit better:
Consumers need a more portable method of transporting water, because the watering can is often unpractical, or inefficient.
From these problem statements, I was able to create these three How Might We statements:
How might we make taking care of your lawn/garden/plants easier or less stressful?
How might we make transporting water easier or more efficient?
How might we integrate other utilities into the watering routine?
I created three, in case one of them flopped, and I needed a backup.
Set Up
We were supposed to run an in-person brainstorming session. I didn’t do that. Not by choice, but I had to work with what I got. Two of my participants (roommates) were very sick, and texted me the morning of to inform me. One simply said, “hey i made other plans, sorry dude.” In short, I need new friends.
Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.
That’s the advice you hear in every inspirational speech ever. I’ll be damned if it’s not applicable to a creativity-based course.
I turned to the internet. I had plenty of friends back home that were more than willing to help, but couldn’t exactly make the commute. I set everything up to create as interactive and engaging session as possible.
As a University of Minnesota student, we have access to Zoom. Zoom is a real-time video conferencing platform with a focus on being a collaboration medium. I found this would be the perfect tool to run an online session on.
These friends are of varying ages, from 16–27, with backgrounds anywhere from a programmer, to a student struggling to succeed with AP Spanish. The session was hosted on the Zoom Meetings platform, but I did have to do some scribing on my end to ensure that nothing was lost to the void.
The session ran from 7:00 PM until 8:45 PM, which was far longer than I had expected. The participants were so adamant about continuing, and continued to pump out ideas (albiet slowly), that I didn’t deem it smart to stop their creative process. The Warmups took a far larger chunk of time than I anticipated, and everyone was enjoying them, so they actually lasted 45 minutes. The next 40 minutes were divided equally amongst the three HMW questions, as well as the general question posed at the beginning (as outlined in the slides). The final 20 minutes were used to sort and vote, taking a roughly equal amount of time.
Zoom’s collaborative tools came in very handy when it came to ideating and drawing out ideas, because everyone could see all the ideas and drawings at the same time, and when they were done with the idea they could just add a new page and the screen would automatically account for it. In order to do the voting and sorting, however, I took each idea and copied it into a Google Sheets document, and let them sort it that way, all accessing the document at the same time.
Using one warm up game from class, and one I created on my own, we begain with the word game. Someone would start with a word, and we would go around in a circle adding words until our story was complete. We finished with quite an interesting story.
Once upon a time there was a mosquito and a deadly bee walking from his beehive. Fucking around making honey while planning world domination. One day Jericho said to the bee “we need to plot a better way to eat grapes. Our secret recipe only needs ten grapes with a round status but we only have five. We must raid Jamaica to discover the secret to our krabby patty formula. First we must procreate to create an army. Our hybrid stinger babies will have stingers on both ends and they will kill TWO steve irwins. (RIP steve irwin). Jamaica was attacked by a swarm of johndisimos and burned all the palm trees, so they counterattacked with a pikachu and shocked all the mosquitobees from the sky. Before that could happen, weed was burned, creating a smokescreen. It was ages but the mosquitobees won and they celebrated by getting sarah pregnant. They found their five grapes and they lived happily ever after, and they lived happily ever after, using the strength from collecting all ten grapes to save the world from domination.
One reason an online session can be more efficient is that everything is already saved and transcribed, which makes things easier when it comes to moving to the next steps in the process or sharing your ideas.
Warm Up
Building off that idea, I created a game I dubbed “Finish the rhyme.” The game starts with the line Roses are red. Then, whomever starts, says a line, just as you would in reciting a poem. Then, each of the next two people say one line each, which would complete the poem. The goal of the exercise is to get people thinking on the same wavelengths, and to help break the ice, so that the tension in the room doesn’t hinder the creative juices from flowing.
Ex.
Roses are red,
I quite like your tie,
Thank you my dearie,
Now eat a cowpie.
What an interesting group of individuals, right? Yeah, I came up with that one, no worries.
Brainstorming session
How Was It?
To prevent bogging down the already long post, and avoid repeating myself, much of the information detailing how the session was run, how the time was divided, what warm up activities were used, etc. can be found in previous sections.
The Results
The group was able to create a solid 49 concepts in the time that ideas were being generated, which was documented as from exactly 7:40 PM until 8:20 PM. With a participating group of three individuals, this equates to roughly 0.41 ideas per minute per person. This is far underneath what the class was able to demonstrate in the lecture, but this can be attributed to many factors. The fact that everyone participating in that example had experience in the field, and of the way of thinking necessary to complete the task, and that the people in the class are there because they believe they think creatively, at least in comparison to an average joe.

Robots, Hired labor, Magic, The future, Nature, how does it work?
Those are the names the session was able to come up with for the groups of concepts that they had created. Dividing things into very broad groups is definitely one way of grouping them up, but it certainly wasn’t how it went down when we had practiced in class.

Using the comment system built into google sheets, everyone was able to vote on each of their 8 favorite ideas by just commenting on the cell. The votes came in across the board, and the results are simplified for viewing (below).

Granted, Google sheets wasn’t the most efficient way to do this. However, I had to limit myself not only to the things I was knowledgable about using, but also the things all of my participants were capable of using. Taking this into account, the medium actually presented some upsides over doing a session in person.
Downsides, however, included keeping the attention of the participants. It’s far harder to keep people engaged, the harder it is to interact with them. The interaction wasn’t ideal, and I believe that if I were to run another session in the future, I might try to hybridize the session between analog and digital.
Top 10

A soft, kickable ball that is designed to be played with while the lawn also gets watered.

A water cannon, with a spring-loaded paddle at the back that activates to send a wave of water flying.

Doing away with the screw-on system would save everyone time and effort.

Utilizing something that you might already have, creating a fountain in which the top rotates, and the power can be increased on the top fountains to water your lawn around it. Centered in your lawn, it would serve both purposes quite well.

Nobody enjoys unscrewing the nozzle to put on the sprinkler every time. Create a system that just plugs into a base that creates a sprinkler.

A quick addition to your nozzle, perfect for defining boundaries in lawn games, or making some fun lawn art.

A far more portable solution to carrying a five gallon bucket, being able to wear the load tremendously increases the ergonomics, along with being a good long term system.

No one enjoys tripping over the hose as you run around the house, or having to move it and tuck it away every time you need to mow the lawn, or have company over. Create a system that takes care of the cable management for you.

Ever want to go outside on an 82 degree day and play in the sprinkler when you were a kid, only to find out that it just wasn’t warm enough? With an in-line water heater, It enables you to play around to your heart’s content.

creating a more mobile power washing unit, either handheld, or back mounted, for jobs that just can’t easily move around a cart, or when you have to be mobile with the job.
Rubric
Based on your problem statements from the user research in Assignment 3, craft two How Might We Statements that best represent your top problem/opportunity. You will use these statements in your brainstorming session.
Describe the overall brainstorming session set up with text and photos. Who are the 4 participants not including yourself (do not need to show faces or full names) with their background information? Where are you doing the session? How long is the session and how did you divide the time? What materials are you using? What warm up games did you do?
3) Develop one original warm-up activity that you will use with your brainstorming group. Provide a description with photo/ image of your new type of warm-up activity. “New” meaning you developed the activity and not simply tried something new. In addition to the activity you develop, you are encouraged to also use warm-up games you learned in class.
4) Document key elements of the session in text and photo. After introductions and warm ups, using progressive revelation, start by framing your idea generation prompt to be any ideas related to your product topic. Spend at least 10 minutes on this general theme. Then spend at least 10 minutes on each of your two HMW statements. You can keep all ideas together on the wall for these three prompts. After the session have your group do a sorting and multi-voting. Document the group of ideas before sorting, after sorting and before voting, and after voting. Document the results: The total number of ideas, the IPM for the session, the major categories of ideas, what voting criteria was used, and images of the 10 best ideas (perhaps those with the most votes) including who came up with these top ideas.
5) At this point, you will have ideas from Blog 2 (market research), from Blog 3 (user research), from Blog 4 (individual idea generation) and now from Blog 5 (team-based ideas). As we are not able to go forward with all ideas, you need to do a first order selection to reduce (or combine some and reduce to) the top 10 ideas. Use the Novel, Value, Feasible framework to quickly assess all of your ideas. Try to have a variety of concepts from incremental innovation to radical innovation, from aesthetic improvements to functional improvements, and ideas that address different users/needs. Using the techniques discussed in class, design presentation images to represent these 10 ideas. You will use this 10 images to pitch the ideas in discussion.
