As the final step in the exploration process, I highly recommend that you go out and look at the existing artifacts that have addressed the gap you're looking at and similar gaps or analogous gaps. Some designers feel like everything may have to do is completely original, and that it's insulting or unethical even to go look at what other designers have done to address similar problems. But, if you remember, when we looked at the iteration over many decades and even centuries in the evolution of the ice cream scoop, products today, or artifacts today, evolve from what's been done in the past. And as a designer, it's really pretty silly for you not to go look at, at what's been done in the past. So, let me just give you some suggestions for, for how to do that. First of all, for, for products, it's pretty easy. You go online or you go in a retail store, and you look at the product category. So, for instance, In the case of ice cream scoops, I went to Amazon.com. I looked at all the ice scream scoops that were there and I looked at what some of the customer ratings had been, what some of the approaches that had been taken. Here are just three that I found. This is one that emphasizes its non-stick qualities, so shows it has a non-stick material on what is otherwise a fairly conventional approach to the ice cream scoop. This one is, is made by Good Grips. Good Grips has made the brand Good Grips is owned by Oxo, which is known for doing some very nice tools, kitchen tools. And so, I was interested in what they had done. Well it's large, it emphasis is largely on the ergonomics of the grip. They emphasize also that, that pointed stainless steel scoop head, which allows it to dig into hard ice cream. I thought that was kind of interesting. And thenm I found this quite interesting concept called the Cuisipro, and the Cuisipro, it's called the ice cream scoop and stack, and, and in my understanding, let's see if I can figure out how it works so you so you essentially load it like that. And then you push down into the ice cream. Actually, my guess is when you push, it. Not clear how I use it. I'll have to, I'll have to try it on some ice cream. But, the net effect is that it punches out a plug of ice cream, that I can then eject with this plunger here. So, actually, I think the way it probably works is I, load it like that. I push the ice cream, and then I press this button to release the plug of ice cream. I'd like to try that a little bit later. This was an idea, this idea of a punch, was one of the ideas that came out during our exploration. Now, and then if, if you remember, we also, I have shown you a bunch of existing devices that I had on hand, this is the one I like currently, the Zyliss. This is kind of the standard classic, and then there were a couple of historical examples of scoops that had various mechanisms for sweeping the, separating the scoop from the, the, the forming head itself. So, looking at all of that, is very useful in suggesting features and illustrating what has worked and what has not worked in the past, And in indicating what seems to best resonate with the users in a particular category. Now, obviously, In, In other domains, So, in the domain of architecture, you're going to go look at existing buildings and environments. You can do that on tours, you can do that by looking at websites, you can do that by looking at books. But there are other ways to experience buildings that have addressed similar kinds of design challenges. In graphics, again, you would look at analogous problems at the work of others that is addressed at similar challenges. One I guess, let me make two more points about looking at the existing artifacts that are out there. One is there, in some domains, namely in products, there are some intellectual property issues. So, my guess is that there are some patents around this concept. We can probably look on the box to see if that's the case. I actually don't see any patents on here, but I wouldn't be surprised if there, if there were patents, utility patents. And utility patents are usually not that big a deal in products like this. There's usually a way to work around them, to avoid infringing on the intellectual property of others. But you do want to be careful about that. You can, you can definitely find the patents, understand which countries or geographical regions the patents are valid in or been, have been granted in and make sure that you avoid risks of in, or minimizing the risk of infringing. There so that's one issue. The other issue is that I recommend that you don't do this exploration of the existing alternatives and the competitive artifacts until after you've done some initial exploration on your own. And that's because, once you've seen this stuff it, it does start to anchor your thinking and might be somewhat limiting in terms of your ability to explore outside the boundaries of what you see here. And so, I recommend that you do this last, that after you've done a really thorough exploration on your own without looking at what else is out there, You then go and look what's out there and add that information to the, to the concepts and ideas that you've been, You've been exploring.
