The Flip-to-Action method
A sketching tool for converting problems to opportunity spaces
Download the Flip-to-Action templates here: Go to Gumroad ->
Working in the field of design & product development my colleagues and I start by looking carefully at the situations and people we are trying to help. Often the focus will be on opportunities and new blue oceans. Focusing only on existing problems is sometimes problematic in the sense, that the scope is on known frictions, pains, and issues. The holes in the cheese do not say much about what a new interesting tastebud sensation could be in the future. It gives us a boundary for what should be iterated and changed.
Problem focus is sometimes just centrifuging known knowns and not catapulting us into the unknown void where we might help people in more profound ways.
Buuuuuut..That said, most of the time we are doing more bread and butter, humble and small scale designs based on existing scenarios and problems. A lot of good can come from focusing on alleviating problems. Smoothing friction has always been a yuuge innovation activity and for good reason.
Ideas from problems
How do we go from a problem to a concept idea?
Sometimes you just start creating ideas without any need for tools and help. Great. Other times? not so much. The best way to come up with answers is obviously by asking good questions. Questions in design should be in abundance and the number of answers scarce. A 1:1.000.000 ratio in the favor of questions should be sufficient.
Disassembling and reassembling problems connected to an area is a fruitful way of coming up with questions.
We might do desk research, interviews, observations, run statistics on a dataset, do job story interviews, bark at the moon or perhaps create a customer journey map. Journey maps are good at identifying opportunities and problems.
Customer journey maps are great but there is a tendency for companies to create them and then leave them unused. They often end up in a drawer, or even worse, on the walls of the company without any operatic purpose. So how do we make these actionable and testable? I have combined templates and ideas I picked up along the way made by other people and combined it into the Flip-to-Action method to try to helps this process along when stuck.
It consists of a problem reframing exercise (flip method) and a solution sketching exercise (Action Canvas).
The Flip-to-Action converts arbitrary problems and pains to tangible testable ideas in a structured format. I tried to make the method as simple as possible and generic enough to be used in many scenarios and practices. This is a work in progress and feedback is more than welcome.
Write me here or at dwan.dk.
How to use the Flip-to-Action Method
Step 1: Pick a problem, pain or friction
Pick up the flip canvas from the link at the top of this article. Fill out the first field. Describe a problem. It should be a specific problem. Try to make it as tangible as possible.
Step 2: Define the reasons for the problem
Take the problem and ask the question:
“What might help constitute this into a problem? What reasons are there for this event?”.
Write the reasons for the problem. You might have data points to help you and you might not. Data points are better but getting going is in this step better than stalling due to lack of certainty. The casualty of a problem might be difficult to guess but write your hypothesis for why a particular problem has come to be.
It should be very specific and based on situations surrounding the issue. The more specific the better.
Try to write at least 3 reasons.
Step 3: Flip it!
Take those descriptions and flip them to be the positive opposite. Flip them so that it sounds like this problem is no longer so.
“I can’t” becomes “I can”, “People don’t know how to..” becomes “People know how to..” etc.
You can even write the ideal state instead of just the opposite.
e.g. “People don’t know how to use our app”
becomes
“People use our app to the fullest from the moment they open it the first time”.
Step 4: Turn the flip into a How Might We question
When this is done you can easily convert these into curious questions. I suggest using the “How might we( HMW )” phrasing. Take the flipped versions and write them out into separate HMW questions:
e.g “How might we make people commute short distances in an enviromentally friendly way?”
How to use the Action Canvas
Step 5: Pick a HMW from the Flip Canvas & write it on a new Action Canvas™
Pick up the Action Canvas™ in the link at the top of this article. In the Action Canvas, you take one of the “How might We”s and describe solution ideas for it. Start wherever you want on the canvas. It might be the easiest to start with the storyboard section.
Step 6: Write the Solution pitch
At the top of the template, you write a short solution pitch. It should describe your solution in short form. It should help you get a feel for the concept, who it helps, what it does and why it does. Your pitch should not in any way simplify or dumb down your idea but merely pitch it to yourself and others in the same way people pitch a movie or book. The movie Alien(1979) was promoted as “Jaws in space” to investors.
Step 7: Describe who this provides value for and how
Below the pitch, you describe the value it provides and to whom. This should be focused and narrow in my opinion. Writing “giving happiness to everybody” is not a good idea. Writing “Giving young homeless people in Denver who wants to learn how to program in the Python language a free course once a week, so they can seek jobs in the tech business” is much better. It is testable and manageable. Scaling comes after value in my opinion.
Step 8: Draw & describe what the solution does and how
Here you will create a small storyboard with illustrations of before, during and after using the solution. It could in some instances be more relevant to describe 3 key features instead of a story. It should clearly communicate the idea. What it is and what it does.
Step 9: How might this come to life?
The bottom part of the template you describe how you could make it come to life. Describe a way to take it from idea to something more tangible and testable.
Step 10: Cost & time
Then try to evaluate the cost on a scale from 1–3. Both in terms of time and money. This is mainly to get you thinking about how to make it happen. It is not meant to be precise and based on a long spent analysis. All that comes later. We are mainly focused on the value and how to test this perceived value.
Step 11: Next step
In the right-hand corner write what you think could be the next step. This should be the immediate step after doing the exercise. This should be as chunked down as possible. Don’t write “make it happen — boom!”. Writing something you can do right away. “Research technology and set a meeting up with expert” or “Call Jim and ask for help”.
The last point is to give this solution sketch a fitting name at the top of the template.
Solutionism is not the solution
No problem is easy to solve and solutions are not just a neutral entity isolated by itself on an island. Services and products impact the world. You might think you just solved one problem but created 5 more which are 400 percent worse for people than the one you tried to solve. I believe that the implications of a solution should always be present in the design process.
Flip-to-Action deals only with the first part of the concept & ideation process.
The implication hypothesis and research should be done in the testing process after ideation & pretotyping.
Let me know what you think of Flip-to-Action.
📎Download the Flip-to-Action templates here: Go to Gumroad ->
