More Brain, Less Storm:
How to think creatively about thinking creatively
By Michael Flanagan

Photo courtesy of IM Birchall

Ideation is the punchline
Moving headlong into the brainstorming phase (or what designers call the "ideation" phase) of a product development program is like rushing to the punchline before properly setting up a joke. Presentation coach Tony Jeary writes, "Plan the set-up. This means getting the joke positioned within surrounding material so it seems relevant and flows easily." It's similar with innovation; effective ideation is dependant on research to identify categories of exploration—to have the topics "positioned within the surrounding material." Design research is key here, helping development teams create structure to drive effective brainstorming.

Remember that upfront research will not be quantitative. It's not meant to be. And the techniques may not end up yielding tangible results every time. But with innovation at such a premium, investing a little in new techniques is well worth the risk.

It is important to resist the urge to start brainstorming product concepts too early in the process. Instead, channel that creative energy toward developing new tools and techniques for understanding what it is you're working with. But remember that this upfront research will not be quantitative. It's not meant to be. And the techniques may not end up yielding tangible results every time. But with innovation at such a premium, investing a little in new techniques is well worth the risk.

 

Finding fresh material
I recently led a workshop at the AWF conference in Chicago, asking participants to work as a team to create new methods for gathering information that could lead to new insights. We met at a downtown athletic club in Chicago, so I asked half of the group to think about creating new techniques for predicting the next hot fitness trend. The other half was asked to create tools for reducing the "trendiness" of the fitness industry—to make fitness more broadly appealing. The latter challenge seemed the more difficult, but one participant hit on a very interesting angle: His contention was that exercise was a tough sell because the benefit was deferred; that the appearance and health benefits only accrue after a not-insignificant level of investment. He then equated this "sales problem" to challenges faced by financial planners who need to overcome clients' immediate wants and needs with the promise of financial fitness and long-term comfort. So to better understand barriers to fitness, he argued, look at similar barriers to savings. I thought that this was a great example of tapping unexpected, but potentially interesting, sources of input.

The UK-based innovation consulting firm Innovaro talks about "prioritising what key types of insight are most lacking at the moment, from who these can best be solicited and how they will be initially used." And brainstorming in this context is a great tool for identifying new ways to gather that missing information—those insights that are "most lacking." Further, developing techniques that marry trained researchers with development team members give the people responsible for innovating first-hand inputs from the field. But again, do not jump to brainstorming product concepts. It can be much more fruitful to first work on the set-up.

My friend Robbie Blinkoff coined this great phrase, and it may just be my new mantra: "A little less storm, a little more brain." Robbie is an anthropologist and co-founder of Context Research. We've worked with Robbie and his team on several projects including an ethnographic study of the scrapbooking market. Here, anthropologists and designers worked together in the field to conduct observation sessions and interviews with scrapbooking enthusiasts. This was a fascinating study which helped our team create a user model, and temporal purchase patterns as "scrappers" begin, and then become fanatical about, scrapbooking. Some people come to it from a love of craft, some from a love of story telling, some from a want to control history. One participant went back and revised history on her terms by spitefully eradicating her former husband from all previously issued volumes. Yikes.

My friend Robbie Blinkoff coined this great phrase, and it may just be my new mantra: "A little less storm, a little more brain."

 

Creating new tools
Of course, there are myriad research methodologies available to the designer, including observational techniques, group and one-on-one interviews, and surveys. Many rise and fall in popularity based on the prevailing wisdom. Saskatchewan Learning, a Canadian education site, provides a good overview of basic qualitative techniques. But the site correctly notes that any one method is not superior to another, and that different methods are appropriate under different circumstances. To some extent, educators and researchers like to neatly categorize research methods to maintain order and apply necessary controls. But it's our job as innovators to push these boundaries and drive the creation of new tools when the inspiration well starts to run dry.

Here's one example: While trying to glean insight leading to the design of a new line of consumer writing instruments, we poured over mounds of research reports and market statistics, but still did not have cohesive threads to follow into concept generation. So we took a step back and thought about how we might create a structure that would drive the creative development process.

During our discussions, a team member brought up handwriting analysis as a way to directly understand user personality. So we enrolled the services of Sheila Lowe, a nationally known handwriting analyst who helped us create typologies (or user profiles) including...and get ready here...information about how different personality types like different types of ink and line weight. One of the typologies Sheila helped us develop was named "The Commander," and resulted in a very detailed description of what this person might be like. I've included a lengthy description to show the kind of rich information we were able to feed into the process. (This goes way beyond talking about potential users as NASCAR Dads and Soccer Moms):

Perhaps because he lives life on the edge, there is a tendency for the Commander to overindulge. He may have problems with addictions, such as substance abuse, excessive gambling, etc. When it gets too quiet, he'll do something to liven things up, like create an argument or a fight. He needs a strong mate to stand up to him and put up with him. It's not easy for him to show his gentler side, as he's afraid of looking vulnerable. When he's hurt, he'll bellow and rage like an angry bull, but he won't let you see the tears he cries inside. One of his nicest qualities is his willingness to take care of those who can't take care of themselves. He's generous to a fault and will do whatever it takes to fulfill the needs of those he cares for.

Probable choice of leisure activities for the Commander: Body building, motorcycle riding, mountain climbing, surfing, camping.

Probable choice of writing instruments for the Commander: wide point, roller ball, black ink.

Imagine dragging this kind of input out of a spreadsheet, or culling this personality profile from a focus group? Information like this created a structure from which to drive concept generation, and subsequent testing with consumers showed high correlation between personality type and the new pen concepts they preferred. (Hidden tears notwithstanding.)

New tools can also be created to leverage emerging technologies, or by adapting common tools from different fields. Rob Tannen of Electronic Ink wrote recently in Innovation about how ubiquitous computing can influence design and user research. He speculates how the lowly RFID tag—used throughout supply chain management operations to track the movement of goods—can be repurposed to track the usage habits of consumers. Tannen writes, "For example, placing an RFID tag on a product enables that product to transmit real-time information that can include everything from defined characteristics (size, materials, price) to dynamic, descriptive data (current location, elapsed time, frequency of use)." (Bruce Sterling, in Shaping Things, covers this ground wonderfully when he imagines "an Internet of Things.") Used in conjunction with existing products, development teams can identify usability gaps and define opportunities for product improvements.

In the same vein, Robbie Blinkoff and his team at Context have recently developed new ways to leverage technology to gather rich and deep information. They're enrolling participants around the world to, according to Robbie, "observe behavior as it happens." They arm participants with picture phones and encourage them to send images and text messages to their web portal for real-time review and ongoing analysis. This technique is both dynamic and predictive in that the team can stop in on the website for juicy bits of insight from consumers when they're "ín the moment," while data collection over time drives analysis and trend identification. They've used this technique to study topics as varied as shopping habits and dental hygiene. But he contends that inspiration "ain't going to happen in an hour." Granted, the pressure is always on to develop new concepts to keep the product pipeline filled and respond to competitive threats. But from his perspective, connecting and staying with information as it evolves helps create a clearer picture of where the opportunities for innovation lie.

Considering the dollars spent on production, distribution and marketing to support product concepts that were not effectively conceived in the first place, research efforts, in fact, are neither too expensive nor too slow.

You can't afford not to change
A recent Forrester Research report codifies the challenge. (Read about it free here.) According to the report, "In the consumer products industry, upwards of 85 percent of new products fail after a couple of years in the market." That equates to untold dollars invested with little return. The report also asserts that typical research is inadequate for a number of reasons, including the following:

• They're biased. Information is collected at a point too distant from where a consumer buys or uses a product.
• They're too expensive. At $20,000 to $25,000 a pop, tools like focus groups can only be used in a limited way.
• They're too slow. Ethnographic studies can take weeks or months to complete.

But here's the thing: Considering the dollars spent on production, distribution and marketing to support product concepts that were not effectively conceived in the first place, research efforts, in fact, are neither too expensive nor too slow. And truth be told, spending a few extra weeks and some additional research dollars do not seem to be at the root of the problem anyway. The problem lies in an inability to commit resources targeted at truly understanding user wants and needs. (And the assertion that the information collection point is too far from the user can be remedied, as demonstrated in the Context example above.)

Especially in the early stages of the development process, effective research does not need to be high priced and time consuming in order to yield results. The pen research mentioned above took about 4 weeks and cost less than $30,000. And as previously argued, at this point in the process, development teams need rich and deep inputs in addition to statistics. These insights feed the creation of theories that drive concept generation and can be quantified through traditional surveys. But without new insight development, teams are forced to model new ideas with the same clay used by their competitors.

Chuck Palus and David Horth, authors of The Leader's Edge: Six Creative Competencies for Navigating Complex Challenges, recommend fast and inexpensive techniques like role playing and role reversal, or asking difficult questions like "how you can make the innovation worse or fail." (This is classic scientific method—create a hypothesis and then try as hard as you can to disprove it. In engineering products for production, Design Failure Mode Analysis (DFMA) challenges the engineering team to stress the evolving product concept to determine what might happen when the user does something completely off the chart.)

But you've also got a rich source of information right at home. Think about the most significant innovations introduced by your organization over the past five years, and follow them back to their source. Or think about the biggest flops, and trace those back too. This detective work should uncover insights regarding what tools have been used successfully in the past and where the gaps or inconsistencies lie. Then you'll have a baseline from which to develop new ideas. Be careful though: to stretch our first analogy a bit, jokes aren't as funny the second time you hear them. So if you use the same old information to feed every new product development process, you may be destined to deliver stale concepts.

Indeed, innovation really is like stand-up; you can always use some fresh material.

 

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Mike Flanagan is Director of Marketing at Bresslergroup in Philadelphia. He's been leading product development projects for more than ten years including work for BD, Black & Decker, J&J and others. Mike is a hybrid himself having spent the first half of his career in advertising before heading back to school for Industrial Design.