Design Method | Charette

Fall 2016
Creative Founder, California College of the Arts
Professor: Christina Wodtke

tl;dr: Charette is a great method to create & iterate on many, related concept stories.

Stolen from the practice of architects, team members rapidly generate ideas in a short amount of time. Then, they evaluate those ideas in a short amount of time. They then steal & build on the best ideas in the group. In a short amount of time.

This goes on until the ideas generated by each team member converge on one idea.

What did I think of product ideation in this format?

• Ideation was incredibly fast & efficient.
• We came up with devergent, weird ideas.
• The time constraint did not allow us time to get attached to any particular idea.
• No one “owned” an idea, as bits and pieces were constantly being shuffled around, removed, or added, which promotes buy-in across the team.

What did I do?

• My approach was to tweak the features & story of each concept I received (think the telephone game).

What will I do next time?

• Add a 4th step where we mash ideas with each other.