Chapter 15 — Concept Selection
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15a. Concept Selection Intro
Let’s get reoriented.
- We’ve done voice-of-the-customer research and tried to identify the needs of our users, their jobs-to-be-done, and/or the outcomes they care about.
- We’ve detailed the problem space as much as possible, though we know there is still more to learn because we haven’t even begun prototyping our own solutions.
- We wrote a Marketing Spec and used divergent thinking to come up with a lot of solution concepts.
Next we want to proceed into prototyping with our best concept(s)…we just need to identify which ones those are.
What does concept selection look like?
It can look like a whole lot of different things.
Selecting concepts can definitely look like proceeding with your first idea, because a lot of people don’t take the time to really consider the full range of concepts.
Selecting concepts can also look like an extensive, “stage gate” process with thorough committee vetting and analysis, because maybe proceeding with the wrong concept could cost you millions of dollars.
But, selecting concepts might also look like simply building a minimum viable product that can let you start testing some assumptions, because more than anything, time is short and uncertainty is high.
No matter what it looks like at your organization or situation, the universal thing is that your face is, at one point or another, eventually going to look like this:
Different Strokes…
Throughout these chapters, I’ve pointed out a number of situations where the path forward diverges and different folks go different ways.
Concept selection is perhaps the mother of different strokes for different folks.
Waterfall
In the waterfall method, making changes downstream is typically very costly.
If you’re building a new car, a new phone, or a new satellite, you need to select a somewhat narrow group of solution concepts and be fairly confident in them.
For example, if you think that new phone should be made out of glass instead of aluminum, that’s something you had better be pretty committed to. With so many implications flowing from that decision — and so much time and money required to prototype and test — you had better take the time to ensure that glass is indeed the best concept.
Lean Startup
In software development and product development methods related to digital products (Agile, Lean), you’ll see much less pressure and emphasis on “selecting the best concept at the start of prototyping.”
In these methods, learning and iterating is typically less expensive; you just need a good concept to start the prototyping/learning process.
An Aside: Lean Startup is Like Natural Selection
One analogy for this lean approach is natural selection. There is no point at which nature stops everything and decides which is the best “concept.” Nature has a mechanism — survival of the fittest — and when a species iterates over and over, that mechanism improves the design and the concept evolves and improves.
Products which can be relatively easily prototyped (software) can evolve and come into being in a similar fashion. They can be prototyped faster and cheaper than can physical products.
Thus it is often more important to get right into prototyping than it is to make a really good single decision at the concept selection phase.
In Summary
Concept selection is about finding the best concepts to proceed forward with prototyping during the product development process.
One single approach to concept selection doesn’t fit all.
Understanding the different approaches used across various PD methodologies will give you the perspective to select the tools, methods and techniques that might work best in your situation.
A quick rule of thumb: you should determine how much emphasis to put on good concept selection depending on how expensive (time and money) it is to pivot and change course downstream.
15b. Concept Selection and the Art of Convergent Thinking
Convergent Thinking thinking is the mongoose to the snake of divergent thinking. Or maybe it’s the snake to the mongoose. Either way it’s like the opposite.
Where divergent thinking describes going from 3 ideas to 4 — diverging, if you will — convergent thinking is a narrowing-in process — converging.
Convergent thinking helps you converge on an idea (see how those are the same words?!).
Convergent thinking typically involves analysis, critical thinking, and planning. It’s really not that different from what you do many times a day — which is to make decisions.
Here’s a good video on divergent and convergent thinking.
Or my favorite image from Tim Brown:
Since concept selection deals with going from many solution concepts to the one or two or ten that you’ll proceed forward with into prototyping, convergent thinking is basically the universal mechanism used in concept selection.
Convergent Thinking Done Right
For a lot of people, decision-making is difficult.
Me, just trying to figure out where to go to lunch.
If this is what you look like when you need to make a decision or think convergently, that’s OK! Convergent thinking is not an innate talent that some lucky few are born with; it is a skill and it can be developed.
Bad Methods of Making Decisions
It is stupid easy to proceed forward with decision-making in a haphazard way.
Here’s what typically happens: you need to make a decision, you call a meeting, you present the information, and then…people start talking and all hell breaks loose.
Typically the highest paid person’s opinion carries the day (HIPPO) and people move on with their lives, happy to be out of the meeting, but typically not so happy with the outcome.
Other bad methods include:
- The shiny new object, most new idea is best
- The first idea is the best idea because we’re most comfortable with it
- The “what does my gut tell me” method of convergent thinking
- The “spin the wheel or flip a coin” leave-it-to-chance method
- The “what does our biggest customer want” approach
Long story short: these are not effective convergent thinking methods.
Good Methods of Convergent Thinking
I’m going to cover two main methods: structured methods and a democratic method.
Structured Methods
Many traditional PD books show step-by-step processes for convergent thinking or decision-making. I call these “structured decision making processes.” They have structure, or a clear process. Do A then B then C.
These methods may seem prescriptive and therefore stale and not cool, but as we distill them, you’ll see that they are based on the natural, logical foundations of analytical thinking.
Democratic Methods
In more modern product development teaching, there is a big emphasis on cross-functional teamwork. This means a team of people from different disciplines — Engineering, Marketing, Sales, Manufacturing — working together. Concept Selection absolutely benefits from a cross-functional approach, and I’m going to call any approach that emphasizes gathering cross-functional input a “Democratic Approach.”
In the next two sections, I’m going to distill these two methods.
15c. Convergent Thinking Using Structured Decision-Making
Every day, we all make decisions. We all think convergently. The method we use in our day-to-day lives is actually quite similar to the structured method advocated in many NPD books. In this section, I’ll distill this structured decision-making process.
Structured Decision-Making Distilled
In almost every single case, all structured systems for convergent thinking look the same: different concepts are compared across a few key criteria, using scoring and weighting to give each option a single final “score.” The option with the best score is the best option.
Here’s an image that makes this approach much more clear:
Source: Ulrich and Eppinger
As you can see, different concepts — a lever stop, swash ring, and dial screw — are compared across a bunch of different criteria: ease of handling, ease of use, durability, etc.
The relative weighting of these criteria is also assigned. By doing some basic math, a total score and rank for each option can be calculated.
This process goes by many names: matrix-rating, category-weighting, decision-matrix.Call it what you want — the overall structure is relatively consistent:
- List your options
- Create categories based on what is important for the choice to achieve
- Weight each category
- Score each option in each category
- Total it up
Here is a 2 minute video on making a decision matrix.
Pugh Matrix
A Pugh matrix is just like a decision-matrix, but it is different in two ways. First, it was invented by a dude named Pugh. Second, it replaces numbered scoring with a simple “+, 0, -” scoring.
These scores can loosely be translated to “better than” and “similar to” and “worse than.”
Here’s a Pugh matrix example:
A Pugh matrix is a little more simple and elegant than the number-based decision-matrix.
Not Necessarily One Single Concept
Check out the last row in that Pugh matrix. See how it says “Continue?” And then for some concepts, it says “combine?”
Remember, the goal is to develop the best concept. Combining concepts or stealing from one and adding to another is not illegal.
If in the course of your convergent thinking process, you see how to improve a concept or combine two concepts into one super concept, then do it!
Also, if you look at the entry for convergent thinking in wikipedia, it describes converging on a single, “correct” answer.
In most product development situations, you don’t need to pick just one “correct” concept to prototype.
Concept Selection is a narrowing process; HOW narrow — one, two, ten — depends on the situation.
And in some cases, you really don’t need to “select” a concept so much as “deselect” concepts. Turning projects off and eliminating concepts is called “Concept Screening.” It’s very helpful — perhaps equally helpful to Concept Selection.
Product Developers use Concept Selection and Concept Screening as necessary to narrow in on a workable number of product concepts to pursue.
A Structured Decision-Making Example
Here’s a stupid simple example from our everyday lives to visualize this process that you’ve surely used a million times without even realizing it.
Example: Something amazing (an event, a sale, a gathering, a seminar on product development) is happening across town. You just gotta get to it…but how?!
First, you mentally consider the “solution space” of concepts: by car, by walking, by bus, by hitchhiking, by train, by bike, by uber/lyft, by scooter, etc.
Then, you start to compare these options across a variety of criteria:
- Which would be fastest?
- Which would be easiest?
- Which would be safest?
- Which would be cheapest?
Now you do some mental math. Is cost more important than safety? Is easiest really most important? And so on.
Within a few seconds, you decide; “I should just walk because that’s least expensive, I won’t have to worry about parking, and it’s also probably fastest.”
Boom — you just thought convergently using Decision Matrix Analysis.
Structured Convergent Thinking in Concept Selection in the Real World
It would be nice if you could just plug in your product concepts into a decision matrix, assign some numbers and do some math and select the best concept.
It doesn’t often work that way.
In the real world, comparing product concepts is complicated; there are unknowns, risks, and various strategic factors to consider.
These things also need to be considered during convergent thinking, and they can’t always be scored with a single number rating.
In nearly every book/article on decision-making and convergent thinking, experts recommend a “reflect on the outcome” step. Reflect on the outcome roughly means “take a second and make sure that simple table you just made really produced a path forward that makes sense in the broader context of your strategic objectives.”
In Summary
Don’t “shoot from the hip.” Use a structured process to think convergently.
The decision matrix is a simple way to compare options across a variety of criteria. It can be used as a building block method to attack complex situations where convergent thinking is required.
You’re already using this system in your head for simple daily decisions, so it shouldn’t be too new and scary.
For more reading on decision making and convergent thinking in much more complex situations, try these resources:
- Annie Duke’s Thinking in Bets
- Ulrich and Eppinger Textbook, per usual
- Step by Step process for using a Pugh Matrix
15d. Convergent Thinking via the Democractic Method of Voting
Voting. Decision-making by committee. It can be messy.
Fortunately, there is a somewhat effective method of using the wisdom of the crowd: dot voting!
Dot-Voting Distilled
Show all the options in some consistent manner, like as 1-page summaries on a wall
Give people a limited number of votes.
The votes are green (good) and red (bad) sticky note dots
Let them vote for their favorite concepts.
Dot-voting has also been called the “Butterfly method” by some people in Design Thinking because, when you use post-it notes instead of sticky dots, the wall starts to look like it has a bunch of butterflies on it. Cool, huh?
Anyway…
What Dot-Voting is Good For
More than anything, dot-voting is a pretty quick and easy way to gauge relative interest from a group of people.
And if you empower a diverse group of people to vote — say folks from Manufacturing, Design, and Marketing — you then see a diverse range of opinions in the results. That’s a good thing.
Dot-voting can also be used to vote for features or critical specs — not just “product concepts.” This might reveal, for example, that regardless of what concept is chosen, the team feels strongly that the final product should have X feature.
What Dot-Voting Ain’t Good Fer
Just blind, majority-rules decision-making. After all, the masses or hordes are not exactly strategic in their thinking.
Like most decision-making or convergent thinking processes, dot-voting is usually followed by a reflection process. Decision-makers reflect on the new insights rather than simply just selecting the concept with the most votes.
Reflection might involve analyzing why the results came out as they did, how concepts might be combined or evolved to further improve the landscape of options, or how some concepts might need further refinement before they can be properly evaluationed.
What to Watch Out For
One common problem for dot-voting is that the concept which is presented best tends to get more votes. Like any election, you want to make sure not to confuse “a good looking option” with an option that actually has merit. (I’ll refrain from making any political jokes at this time.)
Point being, ensure you’re comparing concepts in a similar consistent manner
More best practices and pitfalls are listed in this well-researched article.
Dot-macracy. Make it work for you!
15e. Summary of Concept Selection
The decision matrix, Pugh matrix, and similar “structured” methods are useful for comparing and contrasting different product concepts in a simple, clear framework.
They might not be able to capture all the complexity of real world decision-making, but that doesn’t render them useless. They’re certainly better than alternative unstructured methods like going with your gut, going with your first idea, or going with the opinion of the highest-paid person in the room.
Remember that Screening is a part of Concept Selection. Getting bad ideas out of the mix is progress.
Remember too that the idea is to proceed forward into prototyping with good concepts. It can be more than one concept. And don’t be afraid to combine the best features of popular options if possible.
Typical Pitfalls
I think the most common pitfall I see is that these methods just simply aren’t used. Like totally ignored.
It’s extremely easy to get excited about a product concept; after all, it’s your baby! This excitement can blind product developers from the fact that a product needs to provide value for the customer.
Returning to customer needs, outcomes, and jobs-to-be-done over and over, and rigorously examining how a concept might deliver on those things, is key.
Remember, it’s a Concept Not a Fully Formed Product
Remember, as the PD process moves forward, the concept will evolve. We’re going to talk a lot about prototyping. Prototyping is iterative. Trust that it can and will refine your product concept into something that truly meets customer’s needs or jobs-to-be-done.
“A single design-build-test cycle generates insight and information about the connection between specific design parameters and customer attributes. That information becomes the basis for a new design-build-test cycle and the process continues until developers arrive at a solution — a design — that meets the requirements.” Revolutionizing Product Development, p 225.
Resources
Product Management for Dummies. This book is pretty handy; I’m a fan. It is not too dissimilar to what this content is all about — easy to read nuggets on product management. Product managers are often tasked with evaluating “is this feature/product/spec better?” so there is some good content in here about evaluating concepts.
There’s a pre-made Decision Matrix provided with the book Product Management for Dummies.
Books
- Annie Duke’s Thinking in Bets
- Ulrich and Eppinger Textbook, per usual
Articles
Here’s a good article on dot voting.
And here is a really well detailed article on some of the downfalls of dot voting. This is a helpful read to understand that dot voting is a tool, and like any tool, it can be misused. Link.
Article with step-by-step process for using a Pugh Matrix
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