{"id":3729,"date":"2022-01-12T10:08:39","date_gmt":"2022-01-12T15:08:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.daed.com\/?p=3729"},"modified":"2024-07-11T10:59:11","modified_gmt":"2024-07-11T14:59:11","slug":"user-centered-design-phase-3-ideate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.daed.com\/?p=3729","title":{"rendered":"User-Centered Design: Phase 3 Ideate"},"content":{"rendered":"

For this installment in our series looking at the User-Centered Design (UCD) process, we get to the part that most people think of when they think about designing products. This phase is <\/span>Ideate<\/span><\/i>, in which you brainstorm and generate ideas.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

This is the part that too many companies skip to right away; they are so anxious to jump into the solution space, that they don\u2019t take the time to adequately understand the problem space \u2014 so they end up solving the wrong problem or missing key needs. That\u2019s why it is imperative to explore the problem space in <\/span>Discover<\/span><\/i><\/a>\u00a0and analyze it in <\/span><\/span>Define<\/span><\/i><\/a>\u00a0before starting to <\/span><\/span>Ideate<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Ideate<\/span><\/i> is another generative phase. Using the design criteria that you identified during <\/span>Define<\/span><\/i>, you\u2019ll create concepts that attempt to embody those criteria. During the first part of ideation, the goal is to create as many concepts as you can, without evaluating them \u2014- at least not at the outset.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the U.S. education system tends to focus far more heavily on evaluative thinking than it does on generative thinking, leaving a lot of people uncomfortable with creative processes, like ideation. How many times over the course of your education were you asked <\/span>what might be<\/span><\/i> instead of <\/span>what is<\/span><\/i> or <\/span>what was<\/span><\/i><\/span>? And unfortunately, brainstorming has gotten a bad reputation over the years as a failed corporate experiment,<\/span> <\/span>which isn\u2019t at all the case<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

When properly prepared for and correctly moderated, idea-generation sessions can be wildly successful. At Daedalus, when we conduct these sessions for our clients, we will often prepare relevant homework for participants in advance of the session to get them thinking about the topics that we are going to cover. We plan in advance how we expect the session to go, from the introduction of the topic, to any background information that needs to be shared, to which of the myriad of <\/span>ideation exercises<\/span><\/a> we are going to use. We make sure that we invite participants with different backgrounds and experiences. Internally, we invite our researchers, designers, and engineers, and for clients, we explain how diversity enhances innovation and encourage them to include members from all relevant departments. On occasion, we will even bring in research participants, like subject matter experts that we\u2019ve interviewed or observed.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

At the start of the session, we\u2019ll offer a brief problem statement that is derived from the research, and will walk participants through our design criteria, sharing key observations and insights from the research that led to those. We will fill our space with inspiration images, in addition to key images from our research. For a design project related to a wearable medical<\/span> device intended for small children, we filled our space with images that depicted the many ways that infants and toddlers move, ways in which they are carried or held by adults and by baby equipment (e.g. swings, cribs, play sets, etc), and ways in which other things are often worn or carried.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n