Explore the unknown

A look at the Sensing phase of the Creation Flow

Note: The following is the first in a four-part series detailing the phases of Collaborne’s Creation Flow, which takes teams of innovators from an initial insight to a fully fledged business venture.

“We run [Google] on questions, not answers,” said former Google CEO Eric Schmidt in a 2006 interview with “Time” magazine. “That stimulates conversation. Out of the conversation comes innovation. Innovation is not something that I just wake up one day and say ‘I want to innovate.’ I think you get a better innovative culture if you ask it as a question.”

Enter the Sensing phase of the Creation Flow. As the first step in understanding your future innovation, your team will conduct a close examination of its topic, combining rational analysis with an intuitive, associative, and question-fuelled insight-gathering process.

While Sensing, you will take the plunge and begin to explore the unknown, diverging in an attempt to discover as many faint signals, overlooked perspectives, and unarticulated user needs as possible. These discoveries will allow you to define a Target User, for whom you will be able to converge upon “golden” Insights and User Needs that are most relevant to your project, and which will be combined into your Creative Question.

But to make these discoveries, you must open yourself up to the world. You must be sensitive.

How to be sensitive

1. Stay curious and naive — try to look at scenarios through new eyes.
2. Think critically, analytically, and intuitively. Try to empathize with your users. And be patient!
3. Recognize serendipity. Be open and aware. Accept any ambiguity from your findings. Remember, you don’t know what you’re looking for until you’ve found it.

To help you open up to the world around you, to reserve judgment, and to filter the information into valuable and meaningful innovation fuel, Collaborne provides you with the necessary tools, called “missions.”

Tools of the trade

During the Sensing phase, teams have access to 20-plus “missions,” each designed to further reveal the needs and behaviors of their Target Users. Examples of these missions include:

1. Wild Safari — Teams will get out of their seats and onto the streets, observing users in their natural habitats to gain empathy and become aware of their needs.
2. User Interview — Teams will earn the trust of the user through an interview to jointly explore and articulate user needs.
3. Facts & Figures — Teams will collect data to dispel myths, discover surprise opportunities, and bring weak signals to the surface.
4. Mining For Gold — Teams will filter Sensing clues to create a handful of “golden” Insights and User needs that are most relevant to your project.
5. Creative Question — Teams will narrow, broaden, or deepen the original brief into compelling questions that beg to be answered. The Creative Question is the culmination of the entire Sensing phase.

The big question

At the end of the Sensing phase, you will have captured golden Insights and User Needs, in the form of pictures, videos, and the written word, from which you will mold a Creative Question that will ignite ideation during the Visioning phase. It should adhere to the following formula:

How might we [action verb] for [a user] with [a need], given that they [insight]?

The Creative Question is all about desirability and legitimacy, essentially asking, “Should we or shouldn’t we try to solve this problem?”

Stay tuned for next week’s entry to the “Creation Flow” series: Visioning.