Immerse, Imagine, Invent & Articulate: A practical framework for disruptive innovation.

What new product or service could you invent that would completely change your customers’ lives? How could you disrupt your entire sector?

This practical workshop takes you through an innovation process, helping you to identify the clichés that exist in your sector and giving you the tools and time to redefine them. The workshop provides techniques to disrupt those clichés, generate genuine customer insights, turn opportunities into ideas through proven ideation methods, create a coherent concept and then articulate that concept.

The workshop shows you how to realise a new product or service through a lean process of prototyping and iteration and we discuss case studies each step of the way.

Find out why focus groups are not design research. Find out why the average brainstorm gives ideation a bad name and find out how to make your own innovation processes have tangible business outcomes.

This workshop was ran at UX Cambridge in September 2013 and will be running again at the J. Boye conference in Århus, Denmark in November 2013.

Transcript

1. Immerse, Imagine, Invent & Articulate A framework for disruptive innovation ModernHuman. MH Presented by Paul-Jervis Heath at UX Cambridge on Wednesday 4 September 2013.
2. • I’m most at home in a design studio. I’ve spent 15 years designing services and digital products for big, international clients and small, disruptive start-ups. • I’m Principal of a design practice and innovation consultancy called Modern Human; I lead the team there. I’m also Head of Innovation at the University, while we establish an innovation centre. • We use human-centred design to help businesses invent their future. We’ve worked in lots of different sectors and done lots of different design projects such as in-car information systems, smart home appliances, concepts for retail stores of the future, established an innovation practice at University of Cambridge, and lots of other things. Hello!
3. Photo credit Flickr user andreaskopp - http://bit.ly/12yywna Today’s workshop squeezes a week of our innovation intensive course into 3 hours. Inevitably, we’ve left quite a lot out but I hope today will give you some useful skills to take back to work and a taste of that course.
4. Standing out from the crowd is never easy
5. Product Performance Time Disruption Source: The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton Christensen. (1997).
6. Disruptive thinking does not rely on the invention of disruptive technology.
7. Satisfied Dissatisfied Low Investment High Investment Excitem ent Perform ance Basic Source: Attractive quality and must-be quality - Journal of the Japanese Society for Quality Control (in Japanese), Noriaki Kano, (1984)
8. Satisfied Dissatisfied Low Investment High Investment Excitem ent Perform ance Basic Source: Attractive quality and must-be quality - Journal of the Japanese Society for Quality Control (in Japanese), Noriaki Kano, (1984)
9. The rate of adoption is accelerating (Time to Reach 150 Million Users) 89 years 38 years 14 years 7 years 5 years
10.  Immerse Entypo Pictograms by Daniel Bruce - http://entypo.com. Imagine Invent Articulate
11. Everyone can use creative techniques to solve business challenges. Photo credit Flickr user asadotzler - http://bit.ly/15sTd0V
12. Photo credit Flickr user djking - http://bit.ly/13ObNXf
13. Immerse 
14. Focus groups are not design research.
15. Usability testing is vital but it will not uncover users’ needs.
17. • Workarounds: Quick, seemingly efficient solutions that address the symptoms of a problem not the root cause. • Values: People’s values play an important role in their motivations. What do they value? What’s important to them? What’s not? • Inertia: Situations in which customers act out of habit. How can you leverage or break that inertia? • Shoulds vs. Wants: People struggle with the tension between wants: things they crave in the moment; and shoulds: things they know are good for them in the long term. How can you help people move from where they are to where they want to be? What are we looking for?
18. Early Adopter Early Majority Late Majority Laggards Adapted from: Diffusion of Innovations, Everett M Rogers. (1962). Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey Moore. (1991).
19. Early Adopter Early Majority Late Majority Laggards Adapted from: Diffusion of Innovations, Everett M Rogers. (1962). Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey Moore. (1991).
20. • Close your laptop and revert to low-tech methods for analysis! It moves you out of your own normal situation. • Write each observation on a post-it note (get some rectangular post-its for this). Print out all the photos you took. • Build an insight board of all of the post-its and photos. • Affinity Sort: organise it into themes. Code your observations. This all lays the groundwork for recognising insights. • Observations are raw data. Insights are the interpretation of patterns in your observations. What did you find out?
21. • Don’t try and think about everything at once. Find a good place to start. • Don’t focus on the obvious. There’s a risk that you just confirm your own preconceptions and prejudices. • Start with unexpected observations. • Why is this a pattern? Why is it unexpected? Why is it meaningful? Look for the unexpected and ask, why?
22. Insight: A common failure of cleaning floors is not a lack of water but an excess of water that causes water to slop dirt around. Cliché: People use mops with water to clean floors Hypothesis: What if mops did not use water Opportunity: Provide people at home [who] with a faster way to clean floors [advantage] without using water [gap]. Photo credit Flickr user Chiot’s Run - http://bit.ly/16ZgcVw
23. • Recruit some users, or go out and find them guerrilla style. • Immerse yourselves: diary study, shadowing, contextual interviews. • Analyse the findings; look for the opportunities. Just your team?
24. • Train & Facilitate: Teach others how to be the researchers. Have them go out and immerse themselves through contextual research. Work with them to structure the study and get together to analyse the findings and insights. • Open: Ask people to submit their own observations and insights on a challenge using an Open Innovation platform. At Modern Human use our own platform to manage innovation challenges for our clients. … or, involving everyone.
25. Photo credit Flickr user djking - http://bit.ly/13ObNXf
26. Imagine
27. 1. What do you want to disrupt? 2. What are the clichés? 3. What are your disruptive hypotheses? 3 questions: Adapted from: Disrupt: Think the unthinkable to spark transformation in you business, 2010, Luke Williams.
28. • How do you meaningfully differentiate this product or service from everyone else in the same space? • What situation are you going to challenge? • For example, - This is an area where profit performance is average – it really should be more successful than it is. - This is a category where growth is slow and everything seems the same. - It boils down to… “How can we disrupt the <category> by delivering an expected solution” What do you want to disrupt? Adapted from: Disrupt: Think the unthinkable to spark transformation in you business, 2010, Luke Williams.
29. Wii: How Nintendo challenged everyone’s perceptions of Video Games. Photo credit Flickr user lincolnblues - http://bit.ly/1dC6LBm
30. Searching for clichés   Product Interaction Pricing Adapted from: Disrupt: Think the unthinkable to spark transformation in you business, 2010, Luke Williams.
31. Forming a disruptive hypothesis Invert Scale Deny Adapted from: Disrupt: Think the unthinkable to spark transformation in you business, 2010, Luke Williams.
32. Source: Disrupt: Think the unthinkable to spark transformation in you business, 2010, Luke Williams.
33. Source: Disrupt: Think the unthinkable to spark transformation in you business, 2010, Luke Williams.
34. Source: Disrupt: Think the unthinkable to spark transformation in you business, 2010, Luke Williams.
35. Photo credit Flickr user djking - http://bit.ly/13ObNXf
36. Open the briefing pack, read the contents. • What disruptive intervention could you make? • What are the clichés in that industry, and about that experience? Generate 12-18 cliches about that experience. • How could you invert, deny or scale those clichés? Try inverting, denying or scaling each of your clichés. • What would be your disruptive hypotheses? Identify the strongest 3 as your disruptive hypothesis. • Tell us about it! Take the rest of the room through your thinking in a 5-minute presentation. Let’s try it out. 30-mins
37. Brainstorming gives ideation a bad name.
38. Quantity of ideas people come up with in a brainstorm Quantity of ideas people come up when working alone x2 Source: Does Group Participation When Using Brainstorming Facilitate or Inhibit Creative Thinking? Administrative Science Quarterly. Taylor, Berry & Block, 1958.
39. Using traditional brainstorming Encouraged to discuss and critique each others ideas 20% more Source: The liberating role of conflict in group creativity: A study in two countries. European Journal of Social Psychology, Nemeth et al, 2003
40. – Plato: Greek Philosopher, Mathematician & Student Of Socrates You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. “ ”
41. Six Eight Five
42. What? • One reason teams end up with under-developed ideas is that we stick with the first good idea we have, rather than taking the time to explore complementary approaches. • This game combats that pattern by forcing us to generate lots of ideas in a short period of time. • Take 8 sticky notes • You have 5 minutes from when I say “go” to sketch 6 to 8 ideas. • We’ll play 4 rounds. • After each round I’ll ask you to present your ideas to the group very briefly (2 minutes each). • The idea in each round is to either generate new ideas, build on your own ideas or build on ideas of other people. Rapid Ideation Source: Gamestorming: A playbook for innovators, rulebreakers and changemakers. 2010. Gray, Brown and Macanufo.
43. Brain Writing
44. What? • In a space visible to the players, write the topic around which you need to generate ideas and draw a quick sketch of it. • Take your set of index cards and silently write an idea on each card. • Pass the first of your ideas cards to the person on your right. • When you receive a card, read the card and think of it as an “idea stimulation” card. Add an idea inspired by what they just read or to enhance the idea and then pass again to their right. • Continue this process of brain writing and passing cards to the right until there are various ideas on each card. Quickly building on ideas Source: Gamestorming: A playbook for innovators, rulebreakers and changemakers. 2010. Gray, Brown and Macanufo.
45. Heuristic Ideation Technique
46. Step 1: • As a team decide on two sets of attributes that define a matrix. E.g. Interesting Combinations of Attributes Source: Gamestorming: A playbook for innovators, rulebreakers and changemakers. 2010. Gray, Brown and Macanufo.
47. Step 2: • Populate the matrix creating a grid of possible new combinations Step 3: • Do a quick sketch of each idea that comes out of those combinations. Interesting Combinations of Attributes Source: Gamestorming: A playbook for innovators, rulebreakers and changemakers. 2010. Gray, Brown and Macanufo.
48. When you get stuck, go in new directions Force Connections Blend ideas Blend benefits
49. Let’s do it. 30-mins • Use one or more of the ideation techniques we’ve discussed to create a concept. • Generate as many ideas as possible in 45-minutes. • Do not critique the ideas now. • Practice divergent thinking.
50. How? Now. Wow! Now. Wow! How? Impossible Original Easy Conventional
51. Let’s try it. 15-mins • Use the How, Now, Wow matrix as a structure to critique your ideas. • Not all ideas have to go on the matrix, feel free to discard ideas at this stage. • This is the stage to critique your ideas. • Practice convergent thinking.
52. • Decide what you’re going to disrupt. Identify the clichés. Form your disruptive hypotheses. • Use the insight from research as stimulus to your ideation sessions. • Divergent thinking is the key so run several rounds of an ideation game. • Don’t give up until you’ve got more than 100 ideas. • Rate the ideas, select the best. Just your team?
53. How many? • 20-30: run a series of codesign workshops inviting people into the studio to • More than that: Run a large, open codesign workshop or idea jam (like a hack day for ideas). - Hire a suitable space, invite lots of people, form them into teams and introduce the challenge brief then let them go for it. - Divergent idea generation and convergent idea selection. - Discuss at half-way point. Pitch at the end. or, involving everyone?
54. Photo credit Flickr user djking - http://bit.ly/13ObNXf
55. Invent
56. • What is the concept? • Who is the primary end user? • Why should they care? What are the benefits? • How will this idea deliver those benefits? Refine ideas into concepts
57. Illustrate the concept through a combination of… • storyboards that describes the concept • diagrams explaining how it might work • high-fidelity mock-ups of the concept Define your concept
58. Use this Slide to Make Bold Statements! Early stage prototyping provides validated learning.
59. • Use prototypes to learn about user behaviour with your concept • Validates emergent service against business objectives and goals • Validates Concepts with Users • Use Scenario Testing, Concept Probes, Cognitive Walkthroughs with Real Users, Mock environments, Roleplay. Experimenting with prototypes.
60. • Iteration is vital for success • Treat the concept as a hypothesis not as a definitive solution • Learn everything you can • Adapt to what you learn • Refine the concept, refine the prototype • Test Again Iterate and refine.
61. Just your team? ✎ ⟳ Illustrate Test Re ne
62. • Facilitate: Do teams have time and skills to develop the concepts on their own or with support from design practitioners? • Dedicate the team: Can teams whose ideas show promise be given dedicated time to incubate their ideas into concepts? • Bring into a central team: Is it better to use a central design team to develop the ideas into workable concepts? or, involving everyone?
63. Photo credit Flickr user djking - http://bit.ly/13ObNXf
64. Articulate
65. • Disruptive ideas can be hard for companies to adopt because they’re disruptive – companies embrace disruptive ideas when they believe it will deliver value. • Identify and convince the stakeholders needed to take the solution to the next level. Those who will allocate capital, technology and people. • A longer pitch isn’t better. Constrain yourself to 9-minutes: 10 seconds to grab their attention and 8min 50sec to hold it! • Whether you use the structure on the next slide or not, it’s a useful thought exercise. Articulate the future state.
66. Structure The Status Quo The Observations Create Empathy The Story The Insight Tell them what they don’t know The Opportunity Give them the turning point Build Tension The Analogy Make it familiar The Solution The Advantages Make change appealing Make them believe The Ethos Leave them on a high
67. • Who are you pitching to? Find the right stakeholders and sponsors that can make the concept happen. • Pitch it. Support the pitch with concept material. Just your team?
68. • Lead up to a pitch day. • There has to be a serious commitment to adopt new ideas beforehand. • Have designers to act as mentors and coaches. • Have the challenge teams pitch their ideas to a panel of the business’ stakeholders and decision makers. • Give teams the pitch structure to help them (they might not be professional pitchers). • Select the best ideas to develop further. or, involving everyone?
69. Photo credit Flickr user djking - http://bit.ly/13ObNXf
70. Paul-Jervis Heath paul@modernhuman.co @pauljervisheath ModernHuman. We use human-centred design to help businesses invent their future. We’re a design practice & innovation consultancy. Find out more at http://modernhuman.co Photo credit Flickr user andreaskopp - http://bit.ly/12yywna We love our ideas to spread. That’s why this presentation is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- ShareAlike (CC-BY-NC-SA) license. This license allows you and others to remix, tweak, and build upon this work non- commercially. When you do you must acknowledge us, Modern Human and license any new creations under the identical terms. When in doubt, just ask us. We won’t bite. Paul-Jervis Heath paul@modernhuman.co @pauljervisheath ModernHuman. We use human-centred design to help businesses invent their future. We’re a design practice & innovation consultancy. Find out more at http://modernhuman.co Photo credit Flickr user andreaskopp - http://bit.ly/12yywna