WNM700 Module 11

Wednesday, January 9th, 2019 | Module

Ideation

It’s not where you take things from, it’s where you take them to.

 

Activity: Inspiration Mash Up

 

Working in groups of 3, briefly list your inspirations one by one on post-its. Explain them and why they appeal to you with your group. Next, write your topic down. Finally, write down the following projects:

  • Website
  • Program
  • System
  • Service
  • Product
  • App

Walk through your topic, match it up with an inspiration, and then chose a project. The trick, however, is to choose an inspirations from your fellow designers rather than one of your own.

Create 3–5 “mutant” ideas using this strategy. While some of the projects proposed will clearly be nonsense or impractical, they will all be one thing: new. Innovation requires outside thinking, and look over your solutions and try and determine if you are falling into the design trap of “already proven”.

Log your favorite “mutant” concepts to your journal, and give them a sentence or two of consideration if that project were to exist.

Journaling

1. Raw artifacts of your process 

Document the work session today and “data dump”. Sketches, research articles, URLS, inspirations, photos, audio recording with users, raw data, etc. Think of these as the “data dump”. You don’t need to spend a lot of time organizing them, but populate your journal with the “artifacts” of all of the work you did that week.

2. A brief summarization of findings

For each week, write a minimum 1–2 paragraph summary of the work that you undertook that week, and what you learned. Be sure to list surprising anecdotes, any findings of data analysis, or break throughs that you achieved! 

3. Scheduling and goal setting

For each week, write a minimum 1–2 paragraph plan of the week to come. What are the priorities in the design for the upcoming week? What needs to be found out, and why? What needs to be validated, and what needs to be tested? List your goals for the upcoming week, and briefly write about how you’ll accomplish them, and when. Try and be specific, and use a calendar. On what days will you get what done?