Develop

Ideation

The objective of ideation is to improve user experience. By investigating multiple solutions in parallel, we have a better chance of discovering the optimal solution, rather than merely the first that pops to mind. A critical mechanic of an ideation session is that all judgment is postponed until after (Harley, 2017).

Early ideas are Fragile

Young ideas are usually unfinished and as a result, it's easy to concentrate on its flaws rather than its beauty. This is why it's so important to remember not to judge ideas in the middle of ideation. Dugosh et al. (2000) determined that a subsequent incubation session would be useful. Designers can use this time to reflect on the ideas that have been shared, to generate additional ideas. This also leads us to another important factor, the power of collaboration.

Collaboration

The same paper suggests there are benefits to the exposure to others' ideas in brainstorming sessions. Even when designers are generating their own ideas, it's possible to process the ideas generated by someone else simultaneously. In essence, that suggests collaboration spurs more and more diverse ideas.

Volume and Diversity

The metrics for measuring ideation effectiveness is defined by the volume and differentiation of the pool of ideas (Nelson et al., 2009). The quality of design space exploration is a key component to good user experience Nielsen writes (Nielsen, 2017).

Scale Back

It is integral for effective ideation to set aside any real-world constraints such as technical feasibility or business viability. At this stage of the design process, no idea is too farfetched.

“You want to be able to project yourself 20 years into the future, and then think backwards from there. Trust yourself—20 years is a long time; it’s ok if your ideas about it seem pretty radical.”

• Sam Altman (2020)

It's easier to scale back a crazy idea that addresses a true user need than to try to make a mundane idea desirable (Harley, 2017).

Evaluate

While it's clear we shouldn't put fresh ideas down, at some point we'll have to decide which ones to toss, and which to move forward with. That's where evaluation comes into play. Design thinking generally looks at evaluating feasibility, desirability and viability (Brown & IDEO, 2018), integrating human needs with business needs. When we zoom in on the people's needs we find research that that categorizes product experience into three levels.

Levels of experiencing product

Pieter Desmet & Paul Hekkert (Desmet and Hekkert, 2007) introduce a framework to assess product experience. The three levels of product experience they define are aesthetic pleasure, attribution of meaning and emotional response.

• Aesthetic: a product’s capacity to delight one or more senses
• Meaning: users' tendency to attach personal or symbolic significance to the products they use
• Emotional: he emotional response we have when interacting with products

These lenses can be considered to ensure all bases are covered by our evaluation process.