What product design can learn from improvised comedy
What can product design learn from improvised comedy? Two words:
Yes, and…
In improv, it’s bad form not to “Yes, and…” someone’s flow: take what they’re doing and build on it, rather than backpedal or attempt to seize control of the narrative.
Here’s an example of what I mean:
Killing the flow:
Improv one:
“Oh no! The circus is on fire!”Improv two:
“But don’t worry, here come the fire engines”
“Yes, and…”
Improv one:
“Oh no! The circus is on fire!”Improv two:
“Yes! And the clowns are trying to put it out!”
What does this have to do with design?
Scanning LinkedIn, reading blogs and attending industry events, you’ll see a lot of this kind of sentiment:
“My stakeholder wants to [do a thing], but we know better. Silly stakeholder, starting with a solution. We spent £50k on discovery instead and found ten different problems! (*high fives*)”
Yes, design thinking means considering the problem space with equal weight to the solution space. But your stakeholder has a job to be done too.
In the above scenario they still don’t have the thing, and now they’re £50k poorer and have 10 more problems to solve!
Our job as designers is to properly form concepts and ideas from a brief into knowns, hypotheses and assumptions and treat each accordingly to deliver the best outcomes.
Good product design is a collaboration between roles and expertise.
Sweets, not diamonds
Thinking about the double diamond non-linearly, designers can take a “Yes, and…” approach. Learn by doing: start solving the problem with a pretotype. And in the process, generate evidence to improve the direction of travel.
In evidence-based design, we see the design process as a form of research, a way of generating evidence. This means making ideas real as early and simply as possible.
This is often referred to as a ‘pretotyping’. And the data it generates is more valuable because its yours. It relates specifically to you, your customer and your context.
Sometimes this means inverting the traditional ‘double-diamond’ model and starting at the end. Learn by doing. Make the idea safe-to-fail and then just test it. A pretotype is worth a thousand presentations.
Yes, and…
