Creating digital products using the CRAFT methodology

Written by Liza Kuzmina, teamlead of the IKRA methodology lab, expert and explorer of creative thinking methodologies, guest teacher at HSE.

Ok. What’s CRAFT?

CRAFT is one of the key creative methodologies taught at IKRA. It helps to come up with new ideas by creating new forms of relationships between people and products, services, educational programs and any system as a whole. CRAFT is based on fundamental theories and logical operations and thus can be adapted and specified to any task.

Getting started: creating a product in 5 steps

Step 1: formulating the task

First of all we need to focus on the task at hand. Here are some important questions to ask yourself and your team when creating a new product:

• Who is going to use this product and what for?
• In what way is the product going to help the users?
• What real needs will the product cover?
• What are the product’s values?

Even if the answers to these questions seem intuitively clear, write down your thoughts in our drivers and barriers framework.

Driver is a customer’s need, barrier is about external or internal circumstances that stand in the way. The collision of a driver and a barrier is called conflict and pushes us to make decisions. Fill in each column to focus and figure out which idea you need

Focusing our thoughts can help us become more aware of the task at hand, take it more seriously and direct our thinking towards the goal. If you work in a team, focusing can help each member become more aware of what is going on and move from one clearly-defined point.

Step 2: generating solutions and selecting the best ones

Idea creation is arguably the most pleasant part of the whole process. There are a lot of methods and tools that can facilitate idea generation. One thing we can do to start generating ideas is find a frame in which our goal is already accomplished.

What is frame? It’s a sum of contexts in a situation that determine roles and forms of relationships. Basically, it is how people react to the situation based on their knowledge about it.

Here is a way to do it:

1. Use the frame Compass of frames
2. In each part of the circle write down the frames in which the user’s problem is already solved
3. Choose TOP-3 frames that you find the most promising
4. Break it down into specific elements to understand it better. If you need help, use our framework.
5. Choose one frame that works best for you.

Step 3: developing your idea into specific mechanics

At this step we will go deep into developing our idea and come up with specific mechanics to implement it. In the previous steps we used abstract thinking, now it’s time to think in terms of product development: what will the welcome screen look like? What mechanics will we use to connect people in chats? How will the information be presented? How exactly do participants register and why do they do that?

At this stage you can also define users’ roles, product functions and the connection between the two, as well as the journey users take to fulfill their needs. Then transfer these ideas into your product’s Customer Journey Map and think about how customer attraction, onboarding, retention, monetization and other key processes will change. Get inspired by other frames and find new solutions for your product.

Let’s imagine we are creating an educational program for developing programming skills. Let’s assume that our problem is low retention rate and high customer attraction cost — users do not engage with the content very well.

From our feedback we understand that users find the tasks boring and monotonous.

Let’s describe the frame of a multiplayer online roleplaying game.

Players (programmers) take tasks from non-player characters (training) to get experience, reward and achievements (certificate and portfolio).

It seems like a good idea to gamify the educational experience and add real-life tasks that can provide tangible results and look good in students’ portfolios.

By gamifying the experience, we will arouse users’ interest, increase the retention rate and create additional value for the users by introducing portfolios.

IMPORTANT: create meaningful mechanics before you think about design and the visuals. Remember that when we create the first version of the product the most important thing is to test the idea.

Step 4: Checking the functionality of the created solution and creating a list of recommendations and improvements.

Time for tests! At this stage we will create a digital prototype using a special app, Marvel, for example — that’s what the students of our General course use when creating their own services. Then we’ll find the audience that will test our solution and give us feedback.

How to improve your solution in 5 steps:

Improve what the testers identified as your product’s strong points, because that’s what covers their needs and gives value. Focus on this strengths, improve user’s experience, enhance the functionality.

Strengthen the weak points. By identifying weak points users reveal their needs that still need to be covered.

Compare the old and the new ideas, are there any substantial changes?

1. Think about the possible miscalculations and the external constraints that appeared after you revised your idea.
2. What are the implications of the changes you’ve made to the idea for production and marketing?

IMPORTANT: If after all the tests you understand that the product concept needs to be changed, get back to step 2 and try working with some other frames from TOP-3.

Step 5: describing key metrics and scaling

Congratulations, you are at your final step!

We are here because we are satisfied with the work we’ve done at the previous steps and are ready to launch our product!

Together with your team determine which metrics will be the key indicator of your product performance. For example, the number of downloads or the time spent with the product. You can use North Star Metric to determine your key metrics.

Hm, and what if we develop a new product through the prism of CRAFT and design-thinking? And what about TRIZ?

Come up with even more competitive ideas and business solutions by synthesizing creative methodologies together with IKRA. Our creativity for business program will help you and your team create great product ideas using creative methodologies. Grab some new frameworks and tools and use them for your own breakthrough innovative projects.