The Imagineers Lot
You work in a design studio. You are extremely creative. Your brain never stops thinking of ways to solve problems – sometimes creating virtual problems to be solved just so that you can earth the creative energy that surges through you. Time has passed on your latest project and many gates were traversed. Then suddenly this once great idea is discarded because it sits outside of the core capabilities of the firm. Like an abandoned shopping trolley in the Manchester shipping canal, it lays dormant, parked for some future time when the markets would be ready to receive such a radical idea. Welcome to the world of Imagineering. Sometimes you have the future fate of man in the palm of your designer’s hand and other days you hover your mouse over a folder full of digital detritus. Before you hit delete let’s look at the innovation process through the eyes of the business owner…
We all need control
The innovation funnel is a gated process of filtration. It enables the business to find a few good ideas that have the commercial possibilities. In order to survive every business needs to reach a point of needing to turn its ideas into tangible goods or services. How else are they going to keep you in cold-pressed coffee and AstroTurf carpets in the office? When you are in that meeting and hear the good news that the project is signed off it feels amazing. Those late nights were not in vain – it was worth taking your Mac on that trip to Europe after all! So the point of getting started on the real product is actually a long way down the development path already. For an employer of creative teams, galvanizing the internal focus of the organisation to make something commercially viable is a challenge in itself. Generating ideas is one thing but a refinement process is needed to thin this out into a manageable portfolio of potential innovation projects. Finally, when you throw the emotional rollercoaster ride of a studio culture into the mix, it is hardly surprising that many businesses give up and buy in finished goods or services. If your company has the stamina to create something special, to draw upon raw talent lurking beside the Xbox One in the PlayZone, then here are the most common approaches to consider:
UX proof of concept
It’s one thing to have CAD drawings and SolidWorks renders and we all love an interactive PDF as a way to share your ideas and gain support from stakeholders. But the near-finished prototype, which demonstrates the principles and often forgoes the aesthetic polish of the finished project, will rip those pretty pictures into confetti. Looking by touching is as important in the product development world as it is elsewhere. It is part of the User Experience journey. Learn from retail and give your customer something tangible to hold, look at and learn from. It might be quite close to the finished product in terms of the technology that is integrated into it – or it might not. But don’t get too hung up on this – it’s a proof of concept and people will forgive the absence of certain elements. This is the same in software – dig deep to prove the UX then spread wide once it has been agreed upon. Where possible it will have used the same processes as would the finished product. However, it is just as likely to be forged by the very hands of William Heath Robinson himself.
Rapid prototype
These products utilise a programming/manufacturing/fabrication method that delivers results at a low cost. Whilst it may not be indicative of the finished product, sheer speed and reduced cost enable engineers to produce rapidly improving concepts and working examples. These often sit alongside software-driven virtual conceptualization experiments, sandbox experiments, and CNC space models. Use these to learn about internal engineering structures and develop a whole evolutionary tree of examples. It also gives you the chance to consider the aesthetic imperative in design – looking to sample groups to offer feedback on how it feels and looks.
Crowd innovation
This is a form of preference testing – it is where half a dozen variants of your fabricated models – that explore form and function – are used in a workshop to see which one is favoured by a test group. Thinning these variants out to a smaller carefully selected group, with waves of ever more exacting variables, will have you hit the sweet spot. Using crowd innovation ensures that your target market has contributed to, and played their part in seeing the product evolve in form, function, and capability.
Advanced development teams
The product is now explored by thought leaders and specialists in their respective fields. These might be suppliers of components and code – they might even be a trusted segment of your customer base. Often there can be a great deal of theoretical concept work ahead of anything being actually designed and made. These waves of development often run concurrently with user preference testing and design-for-manufacturing development. Be prepared to set up separate streams of testing some in the field and others back at base. Stay open-minded and be prepared for unexpected feedback.
Co-creation balances risk with reward
In this environment, the host innovation team looks outside of the boundaries of their enterprise. They seek like-minded co-creators, who may have already invested a significant amount of human capital in researching the specialist area. Communities of practice seek to exploit opportunities as a joint venture. This is one of the strongest and risky methods of turning ideas into working prototypes. You expose your area of interest to outside parties (the risk) in the belief that the separate levels of specialism will give the extended enterprise a competitive advantage over other teams (the reward).
Stay ahead of your creative debris
However you choose to turn tangible ideas into an actual product, remember that it only exists once it has reached the fingertips and wallets of the customers. Do not assume that you can get the buy-in of key, strategic partners with a slick presentation and some high-quality computer renders – you need some meat and bones to show for your efforts. Over the years of working with programmers, designers, manufacturers, and business investors alike I have noticed that those good ideas, that are most successful, usually have a whole back catalogue of failed prototypes and incremental working models. Imagineers are proud to display these in their labs, workshops, and studios – they are part of the journey and give one a glimpse into the evolutionary process of innovation. Remember that great ingenuity is only one step ahead of its own creative debris. Productisation usually follows a similar path, prove the technology works, reduce the size of the object, introduce the aesthetic imperative and finally make it easy to manufacture. I have yet to see a company get all this right first time – so go and make something today.
The single golden rule is to prepare to not always succeed, as the effort yields its own reward.