Back to the Drawing Board:
The Creative Process of Week 3
Definition of ‘back to the drawing board’: “Starting over again because a plan failed to come together; going back to square one.”
If you read my post last week about expectations versus reality you would know that I fully expected to have in one session hit the drawing board, brainstormed, sketched, and walked out with an A+ idea. Going back to the conference room or going “back to the drawing board” in my book would have been seen as a failure. Little did I know that in week three our team would redefine this cliché.
Presentations
We left off last week in the midst of our creative process, jumbled in a mess of broad ideas and colorful sticky notes. After narrowing everything down to three of those broad ideas, each of us interns delved into desk research for one of them. After bringing urban back from the brink of idea death, it was my destiny to research it. Ironically I was both it’s savior and its killer, deciding that it was much more of a idea theme than idea type.
Back to the Board: Part 1
In our first of three sessions going back to the board, we eliminated urban and kept personal productivity and events as two broad areas to explore. We narrowed personal productivity down to three subcategories: focus management, decision making, and time management.
Back to the Board: Part 2
Our second time, we mapped out our four categories, the actors that may be involved, and the pain points people have for each. This was one of our longest brainstorming sessions yet. It was mentally exhausting, but we walked out with some solid ideas about the work we’d be doing depending on which category we would pursue.
Back to the Board: Part 3
Our last time, back to the drawing was post meeting with MxM product manager, HJ Kwon. I fully expected to have to back track, but instead we just came up with more and more for each of the three categories left. (We eliminated focus management.) This time we focused on the motivation that people had to partake in events, make decisions, and manage their time more efficiently.
We went back to the drawing board 3 times so far and never did we go back to square one. Instead, we kept revising what we had and building it up to be better. At MxM, going back to the drawing board is a good thing. We rarely scrap entire brainstorm sessions, but are instead taught to find the good in each session and run with it.
