Day 30 — Creativity series 6/7: “Analogy Exercise”
Except for Random Words, Design Thinking, Disruptive Questions, Good Guys Bad Guys, and SCAMPER, what are some other way to help us brainstorm creative ideas? Here’s another one, Analogy Exercise, that most of the people I know enjoy and have a lot of fun with it, also unexpectedly productive!
This simple exercise can be broken down into 3 simple steps:
Step 1 — Analogy
Sit down with the team. Imagine the product/service could be in one of the following categories. What could it be? The categories are: Song, Movie, TV Show, Animal, or Celebrity. For example, if the new payment app we’re designing could be a song, what would be the title of the song? Could it be “How do I live (without you)” by LeAnn Rimes? Or “Uptown Funk” by Bruno Mars?
Step 2 — Quality
Describe the characteristic of the song/ TV show/ animal, and write them down on post-it notes. For example, if I thought of panther, I can write down fast because of its speed, I can also write sharp because it’s a sharp and beautiful animal. Now, think about if there’s any similarity or shared qualities between your analogy and the product/service you’re working on. For example, I want my product to be like a panther, fast speed, great performance, also looks sharp.
Step 3 — Creativity
Last but not least, take all these qualities/ characteristics keywords and mix them up. From the mixed pile of keywords, take two as a pair, and brainstorm ideas of any potential product functions/ features that can perform the combined qualities. For example, if I got a paired keywords of “Fast & Flexible”, and my product is a crowdfunding platform, a feature idea could be allowing users quickly start using certain part of the platform (fast), and finishing the signup process later (flexible).
Adopting Analogy Exercise
Although this analogy exercise might take some practices to be effective, most of the participants enjoy the fun elements of it, and gradually pick up the speed and generate amazing ideas. Please give it a try, and let me know how you feel about it.
ABC. Always be clappin’.
