Coming up with new ideas, one sticky note at a time
Creative Commons photo by jessica45
Before taking this class, the word “innovation” conjured up images in my mind of light bulbs and money and high-powered business people sitting around a desk, discussing their next business venture. Now, I hear that word and think of sticky notes.
Throughout this semester, I’ve come to truly appreciate what innovation actually is all about: fixing a problem for a group of people in a way that truly adds value to their life. And it turns out, a lot of what happens on the way to doing that starts with sticky notes.
We used sticky notes for a variety of class activities designed to get us thinking about projects. First we used them to brainstorm different groups we could focus on with our projects, which seek to create a news product for groups that are currently underserved by news media in Tucson, Ariz. Everyone in class wrote down three different groups on sticky notes, and as a class we looked at the notes together.
Once we all decided what communities we would each focus on, from there we had to figure out our “knowns” and “unknowns”: what did we already know about our chosen community, and what did we need to find out? We wrote these down on sticky notes and grouped them on a piece of paper. Our goal was to move the “unknowns” over to the “known” side as we conducted empathy interview with our groups.
Creative Commons photo by Ragesoss
When it came to designing a potential solution for our groups, we used sticky notes yet again to look at How Might We solve problems for our community — that is, looking at individual ways to solve different problems, and then determining what is actually feasible. We also used sticky notes to map what features of a solution are most crucial to our audience.
The point of all this wasn’t to use as many brightly colored slips of paper as possible. The point was to constantly think and try out ideas, one note at a time. The task of solving a community’s problem doesn’t seem quite as daunting when you break it down neon pink square by neon pink square. And together, those squares offer space to fully think your ideas through, without fear of messing up or taking too big a gamble. The beauty of sticky notes is that they are designed with temporariness in mind — you can move them around and change them. And that’s a huge part of the process of innovation. The process changes as you learn more about your audience, their problem and how you can solve it. Innovation requires being flexible and being able to evolve your ideas as you learn.
This class showed me that innovation isn’t a big, shiny idea that comes from nowhere and magically solves everyone’s problem. It’s work, requiring time, research, diligent planning and reworking. With each sticky note activity, we were encouraged to use these aspects to test out our ideas and see where we can improve. We learned that there is always more to understand to improve your product to better serve your community. And when you inevitably find that you have to tweak your original idea, just move over one note and add another. The learning process always continues.
