Focus:
Generate new ideas about sustainable forms of transportation through quick sketching.
Process:
For this process, we decided to produce 20 total sketches — first, 10 diverse ideas of transportation. Second, 10 changes/additions to “the most promising idea” sketched in step 1.
Step 1 — sketching 10 diverse sustainable transportation ideas: First, I set a 5 minute time-limit per sketch. This forced me to keep sketching and allowed no time for overthinking. Since the goal of this process was to create rough sketches to get the general idea across, a time constraint also kept me from adding unnecessary details, leaving the sketches simple and down to the point. I also set aside exactly one page per sketch in a pocket sized notebook. This acted as another reminder not to go too much into detail since the size of the notebook didn’t have room to do so. Additionally, I opted to sketch in pen; again, to keep from overthinking and changing sketches. For ease of understanding, I made sure to label each of my sketches with a description of how the product works, and why it’s more sustainable than current forms of transportation. In the image below, it is clear that I decided this sketch out of the 10 diverse ideas seemed most promising to me. This idea seemed sustainable because the only energy needed is to transport the weight of the trampoline as it moves beneath the airborne sphere to it’s next bounce point. This idea also seemed to be the most interesting and different from current forms of transportation, allowing more creative freedom and potential.
Step 2 — converging on the most promising idea from the previous 10 sketches: This step involves taking one idea from the previous step and expanding on it. Like before, I set a 5 minute time constraint to ensure fluidity and low-detail sketches. At times it was difficult to come up with more additions to the idea; in this case I would try to think about each small aspect of the product individually and how I could improve that aspect. When this didn’t work, I thought about day to day tasks users might need the product to perform and sketched out how my idea would perform this task. For example in the image below, I thought about how to park the vehicle; specifically how to keep the two parts together and keep the sphere from rolling around.
Reflection:
Since I’m a very visual person, I really enjoyed using this technique. The time constraint forced me to sketch out my ideas before I had time to overthink it which was a very nice change from my usual habit of trying to perfect an idea in my head before revealing it. Doing so also made it easier for me to keep track of the additional features made to the most promising idea. Although I made the decision to add a time constraint myself, I would like to use this technique without a time constraint and compare the results. At first I thought generating 10 diverse ideas and making 10 additions to one idea would be easy; but at times, generating new ideas proved very difficult. Occasionally I couldn’t think of a new idea or addition but I resolved that by thinking about the situation in a different perspective. The time constraint also acted as an extra push, making me think faster and act on the first idea that popped into my head, truly incorporating “no idea is a bad idea”.
Now What:
During step 2, it was hard for me to get started. I thought: “what else needs to be added? It’s already energy efficient and entertaining!” but as soon as I made the first two additions, ideas just kept coming and with each additional feature, the more promising this idea became. Knowing this, if i did this process again, instead of choosing 1 idea to add 10 features to, I would like to choose 5 original ideas to add 5 features to each. From there, I would choose the more promising idea and expand further. I think expanding on several promising ideas allows more room for the idea to grow. Just as experienced, sometimes the additional features aren’t clear at first but as you expand, the idea becomes better and better. Since I only chose 1 out of 10 ideas to expand on, I won’t know if any of the other 9 ideas could have turned out to be just as great as this one. Overall, I think this technique is a great way to generate ideas that are vastly different. This process allows for a lot of creative freedom and pushes you to think outside of the box which is how great, game-changing products are born. This is a great way to generate new product ideas and expand on old ones; in this way, ideation could be applied to anything that requires design. It could be used to design something small, such as a pen or something as vast as the intricate design of city transportation.
