Creativity and Ideation
HMW-questions, 6-3-5 brainwriting and affinity diagramming: now it's time to apply creativity techniques to get from ‘what are we going to make’ to ‘how are we going to make this’.
What
In this course, we focus on three techniques:
- HMW-questions: a format to reformulate design problems into questions that help launching ideation.
- 6-3-5 brainwriting: a group creativity technique that helps to develop a lot of ideas, concepts or solutions to a given problem in a short time.
- Affinity diagramming: a technique to organize and evaluate ideas and data.
Use when
Creativity techniques can be used in different stages of the design process. In this course, you will apply three creativity techniques to get from ‘what are we going to make’ to ‘how are we going to make this’. So far in the design process, you have focused on describing what you will be designing. Now it's time to start thinking about how you are going to realise the things you described.
Why
You've probably already got (a lot of) ideas about how you want to realise certain elements during the previous steps. But beware: your first idea is rarely the best solution! It is therefore good to start with forming lots of ideas (diverging) before choosing a direction (converging). The creativity techniques that we present here are very suitable to do so.
How
Step 1 – Formulate the problem
Technique: HMW-questions ('How might we' questions)
Successful ideation begins with a clear definition of the problem that needs solutions/ideas. A good way to formulate a problem is to create a ‘How might we’ question about the problem. ‘How might we’ (HMW) questions are short questions that launch brainstorms and help to think free and broad enough that there are a wide range of solutions but narrow enough that the team has some helpful boundaries.
Source: http://crowdresearch.stanford.edu/w/img_auth.php/f/ff/How_might_we.pdf
To make sure that the ideation is linked to the findings in the previous phases of the process, HMW-questions can be linked to user stories. For example, the user story
As a user\ I want to know when public transport is crowded\ So I can avoid having to stand in an overcrowded bus or tram
can be the starting point for this HMW question:
HMW let users of public transport know at what times of day public transport is crowded?
Step 2 – Diverge: come up with lots of ideas
Technique: 6-3-5 brainwriting
In this course, we use the 6-3-5 brainwriting technique for diverging. This technique uses association and the exchange of ideas through written sheets that are passed from participant to participant.
It works as follows: each participant receives a sheet that contains a table of 3 columns by 6 rows. For 5 minutes each participant writes down 3 ideas for the defined HMW question in the first row. Then, each participant gives his sheet to his neighbor. Everyone reads the ideas in the first row and then takes another 5 minutes to fill out three new ideas in the second row. This continues until all the sheets are completely full of ideas.
Step 3 – Converge: evaluate and select ideas
Technique: Affinity diagram
By diverging, you have collected a lot of ideas. These ideas are all over the place, and ranging from very promising to seemingly worthless. You might tend to select ideas immediately. But postpone selection just a bit longer. Start with evaluating the ideas, before selecting. In this course, we will use an ‘Affinity diagram’ to do so. Affinity diagramming is used to sort large amounts of ideas into clusters, in a visual way. Affinity diagramming is comparable to the Highlighting technique for converging that you learned in the course Design & Creativity.
It works as follows:
Begin with restructuring all ideas by sorting them in clusters. Look for similarities. If you see doublings, remove the doubles. If ideas seem very much alike, sort them in an overarching theme. This technique will easily bring 100 ideas back to 5 to 10 organized clusters.
After clustering, value the different clusters. There are several techniques you can use to do this.
- Value the solutions based on the stated problem and the user needs that you have determined: to what extent are the clusters a solution to the problem and the user needs?
- Value the solutions using the following criteria: is the solution NEW, is it APPEALING, is it REALIZABLE? Give every solution a grade for every criterium, or note pros and cons for every solution. This way you can make a ranking of ideas.
- Choose entirely on subjective grounds: choose the solutions that appeal to you.
You can choose one technique or combine different techniques to come to your final decision of what is the best solution
Examples
Between the too narrow “HMW create a cone to eat ice cream without dripping” and the too broad “HMW redesign dessert” might be the properly scoped “HMW redesign ice cream to be more portable.”\ Source: http://crowdresearch.stanford.edu/w/img_auth.php/f/ff/How_might_we.pdf
6-3-5 brainwriting
Source: https://rexgrimoire.wordpress.com/2014/09/11/method-6-3-5/
Affinity Diagram:
Source: http://tracks.roojoom.com/r/1821
Source: http://tracks.roojoom.com/r/1821#/trek?page=4
Assignment
The assignment linked to Creativity & Ideation consist of the following steps:
- Write down 3 HMW questions for your design challenge. Link the HMW questions clearly to user stories from your user story table. Make clear what user story is linked to what HMW question.
- Collect ideas about the 3 HMW questions using the 6-3-5 brainwriting technique (do a brainwriting for every HMW question). Use the brainwriting sheets that will be handed to you in class. You can also download it from Blackboard under Course Documents
- Empty your head further: take an empty sheet of paper and write down all ideas that you have and that you didn’t write down when doing the 6-3-5 brainwriting.
- Evaluate all ideas by affinity diagramming and document the outcomes by taking pictures. Make sure the cluster’s labels are readable.
- Select ideas and present the outcomes in a list of final ideas. Make clear why these ideas were selected.
After these steps, check the user story list. Add and/or adjust stories if necessary.
Tutorials and Talks
Further Reading
Additional knowledge (HMW question): http://crowdresearch.stanford.edu/w/img_auth.php/f/ff/How_might_we.pdf