Tools to launch, test and refine your ideas

In our latest blog post, Eimear Fitzsimons (April 2014 Associate) shows us how to build and test an idea in 24 hours

Hackathon’s are popular in the tech sector. Driven by a desire to challenge our ability to solve problems, collaborate and build exciting new things, as well as an unhealthy willingness to avoid sleep for a weekend, these geek-outs have proven highly successful. They bring talented and engaged individuals together, with all of the resources (from hardware and software to pizza) required to push new ideas out into the world.

But there are also other ways to hack an idea into the world. In this article, I have drawn together a series of design principles that you can use to move from nagging insight to social enterprise innovation in a day. Each principle is supported with links to the best and most valuable resources, so you can short-cut the searching and get straight to the meat of your project.

Step 1: Build Empathy and Understanding Total Time: 6 hours
If you’re going to establish your work in reality, it’s key to develop empathy for the people you are designing for. To quickly get to a ‘good enough’ level of understanding, you need to build on real and relevant insights. Start conversations with potential users and aim to find out an imperfect amount of information. The 80/20 rule most definitely applies here, go for quality over quantity. 5 good conversations could be enough to give you a starting point.

1. Plan your approach Time: 1 hour
This is a loose and brave process. You can be as off-the-hoof as giving friends/family of a similar profile a call, to approaching people on the street or in the environment of your interest. Don’t forget, it’s always easier to ask for forgiveness than permission! There are two key things to bear in mind in this process:

2. Get to the real facts and check your assumptions Time: 3 hours
Asking ‘5 Whys’ is a principle for solving problems that originates from the Toyota manufacturing plant. It has been widely adapted in technology and design as a means to get to root causes and deeper meaning. Five Whys — the principles. Five Whys — applied to problems. Always ensure the person you are speaking with is grounding their responses in reality. And this can get you pretty far…

3. Look for sparks of insight, not research conclusions Time: 2 hours
When you have this perfectly imperfect amount of information, find the sparks that will drive your project forward. An inconsistency can be more revealing than a consensus. In a fast and dirty process like this you have to be prepared to learn by doing. Go with your gut rather than pin point accuracy. D.School at Harvard have very useful tips on developing an empathy map and translating insights to ideas.

Step 2: Define your problem and create Total Time: 6.5 hours

With a clear picture of who you’re designing for and where their needs may lie, it’s now time to get creative! To give this process more structure than wild scribbling on post-its, there are a number of tools you could employ:

1. Initial brain dump Time: 1hour
Get all those ideas that have been simmering in your mind on a post-it and make them visible. It’s important to do this so you can move on and empty your mind to think of new ideas.

2. Synthesise the research into opportunities Time: 2 hours
From your observations and conversations, identify the new and valuable information you have gathered. Where can you bring clarity to a previously hidden need?Combine insights and patterns emerging from research into common themes grouped by the need they answer. Such as ‘A lack of…’. IDEO’s Human Centred Design Toolkit for Social Enterprises and NGO’s has excellent case studies on this topic.

3. Think Big Time: 1.5 hours
Brainstorming, when done correctly, is a structured approach to harvesting and building on ideas. There are many rules for how to have a successful brainstorm. To ensure quality of ideas, rather than leaving it to chance, it’s crucial that these focus on a core need and are given limitations. Are you looking to redefine how you approach a marketplace, a user or a product? Put these limits on yourself but don’t forget to really think about what will have the greatest impact. Keep it quick and positive! Robert Sutton has 8 useful tips on brainstorming here.

4. Develop user journeys maps/personas Time: 2 hours
You can test out your best ideas without having to leave the office. Create a user journey map based on the people you met earlier in the day and their needs throughout their day. What interactions are they having and where can you improve things?
For example, if you’re interested in rethinking how A&E departments in hospitals function, you would look at each step a patient goes through in the process from arriving at the hospital to being discharged. Note the interactions they are having, their worries and concerns along the way and any stumbling blocks they may encounter. This combines data and hard information with emotional insights and the patient’s experience and will help you pinpoint areas for improvement you may not previously have identified.

Go here for a great introduction to this topic.This is also a good tool, it’s quite complex but you can adjust according to your circumstances.

Step 3: Build-Measure-Learn Total Time: 8+ hours
Great! Now you have ideas that you believe meet needs. Time to get out there and start trialling them. There are lots of useful tools you can use to see if an idea has traction, get user feedback and improve. This is a feedback loop you should be repeating constantly in the initial stages to ensure what you’re developing has relevance and value.

Zappos is a famous example of a company built on testing. To build an online shopping site, you would imagine a company would require a wide selection of shoes and sizes, a smooth distribution system, 24 -hour call centre for dealing with queries, and the list goes on. Instead, when the two founders first launched a rudimentary website to sell shoes, they had no inventory! Instead, as orders came in, they ran down to the shopping centre and bought the shoes to ship to their customers. This let them gauge easily the overall appetite for their website but also which products had traction with their consumers. They embedded this practice in their company culture and have continued to test and refine their business, which is now a billion dollar company. For more on this principle, The Lean Start-up is a great starting point with many case studies of the build-measure-learn approach.

1. Start small Time: 6 hours
Whether your idea is a service or a business or a product, there will be a way to trial it out in a lo-fi way. You could create a short video with your mobile phone to demonstrate a service in action. Or try out apps using sketches, and turn rough product ideas into something tangible using cardboard and glue. Try anything to get it in front of your user as quickly as possible. Get their feedback, improve and reiterate.

• Build a landing page site with a space for people to leave their email and see how much interest you register. Bootstrap is a free collection of tools that will get you online in no time.
• Protype an app based on sketches: https://popapp.in
• Build a demo product using 3D printing or other machining: http://fablablondon.org
• Can you use vine to see if someone can understand and want your idea in less than 7 seconds?
• If you need design work to test your ideas, you can engage someone quickly and cheaply here.

2. Set success criteria for each of your ideas Time: 2 hours
Decide how you will use the response you receive to determine which of your ideas has most traction. If you get more than 100 people entering their email address on a placeholder website over 2 weeks, maybe you should explore that idea further.

3. Scale Fast Time: infinite!
Take your learning and build on it! DIY Toolkit,an online resource for triggering and supporting social innovation, has wonderful tools to help you structure, test, refine and scale your ideas.

I hope these tips and resources can help you test out a new idea in less than 24hours. I’d be delighted to hear how you get on too! Let us know your thoughts @eimear_eimear or @onpurposeuk #OnPurposeIdeas