Now, armed with what is criteria that any good solutions should meet,
we're ready to ask our second question, what if?
Which begins to generate the ideas.
In what is, we examine the human data that we gathered,
identify the patterns and insights,
and translated them into specific design criteria.
Now we take those criteria to focus on identifying new possibilities.
What if anything were possible is a powerful, powerful question.
Too often we get trapped into starting with constraints rather than possibilities,
and then the future ends up looking pretty much like the present.
Design thinking insists that we brainstorm about the possibilities first,
we'll address the constraints later.
Now is the time for brainstorming.
A process that many of us have not enjoyed,
but in design thinking brainstorming is a disciplined,
repeatable process, not a free for all.
Successful brainstorming helps create many possible alternatives,
in which will select a few for development.
But rather than rely entirely on imagination the idea generation process,
design thinking teams use the insights and criteria generated during what is,
and we pose questions for guiding creative idea generation.
Think of each idea during brainstorming like a like a single Lego block. Yes, the toys.
After brainstorming, you combine them the way kids do with
Legos in a different way to produce different creations.
These our concepts are coherent clusters of ideas organized around themes.
What if develops multiple clusters to offer choice to your stakeholders.
A portfolio of concepts lets stakeholders decide which ones satisfy their needs.
Now, with a set of concepts from what if,
we are ready to move into the first stage of testing by
asking the third question, what wows?
Here we treat each concept as a hypothesis and begin to
systematically think about evaluating it against our design criteria.
We usually find too many interesting concepts to move the ball forward,
so we must make some hard decisions and in
winnowing the field we seek that sweet spot where
significant upsides for our stakeholders
match our organizational resources and capabilities,
our ability to sustainably deliver the new concept.
This is the wow zone.
To make this assessment we surface and test the assumptions
about why each concept might be a good idea.
The concepts that wow are candidates for turning
into experiments to be conducted with the actual stakeholders.
In a traditional approach this is where we start asking people if they like the new idea.
Traditional marketeers might convene a focus group or send out
an online survey and ask respondents to say what they liked or not,
and whether they would use a new offering.
But that approach we know from years of consumer research is high risk.
Most of us don't know what we want until we see it,
and sometimes not even then.
Decades of research are firm that humans are
often unable to accurately describe their current behavior,
much less make reliable predictions.
Through several methods design thinking addresses this say-do problem.
During a what is stage ethnographic tools like journey mapping and job to
be done help users describe what they are trying to accomplish,
and walks them through that actual experience.
Design thinkers here are those thoughts,
those good reactions and those satisfactions at every step.
So we can get at needs the stakeholders rarely can articulate.
In what wows, we address the say-do gap with another powerful tool prototyping.
Prototyping helps elicit effective feedback by creating
a vibrant pre-experience of our desired future.
Psychologists have found that people who sense
something novel have an effective proxy for the real thing,
which significantly improves forecasting.
As neuro-psychological evidence indicates humans reactions to
imaginary events activate the same neurological pathways as the actual events.
So design thinking prototype is about creating a pre-experience by providing
concrete and tangible artifacts that allow potential users to vividly imagine the future.
Whether story boards, journey maps,
user scenarios or concept illustrations,
keep your design thinking prototype low fidelity and simple enough,
that is during the what wows and what works questions.
Prototypes in hand, we are ready to learn from the real world
by asking the fourth question, what works?
Our initial tests will be one on one conversations with selected stakeholders.
We're seeking co-creation with actual users.
After stakeholders provide insightful feedback,
we refine the prototype and move into more realistic experiments,
that we call learning launches.
Always testing our assumptions,
always seeking this confirming data.
We continue iterating and co-creating until we're confident about the new ideas value.
Working in fast feedback cycles to minimize the cost these test,
the surfacing at assumptions at what wows,
and the design of learning launches at what works,
bring a healthy dose of skepticism into the innovation conversation.
But in the productive form of good experiments late in the process,
not before we ask if anything were possible.
And there you have it, four questions,
that build bridges the innovative solutions,
that help us discover our inner innovator,
that put our best ideas into action.
We think of design thing as a systematic approach to creativity.
This might be an oxymoron,
but if so, it's an oxymoron, that delivers.
Jeanne M. LiedtkaUnited Technologies Corporation Professor of Business Administration
