The customer is always right, you aren’t.
The customer, or user, in the context of our course, is a typical person within your target market. While I was within my scope (20-25 years old moving to a new city), I needed to constantly check myself when making assumptions. Just because I thought that something was one way didn’t mean that it held true for the majority of people within my scope. In this way, I developed my empathy skills because I had to rely on observing, interviewing, and concept testing to get feedback from the largest number of people in order to maintain a user-centric ideology.
Your best idea isn’t usually your first.
Be optimistic and persistent. Brainstorming is an iterative process and I learned how important it is to shoot for quantity over quality. Strange, unrealistic ideas can include a nugget of truth that you want to communicate through a product or service innovation. In addition, brainstorming does not have to be a personal process. I found it very helpful to look at others’ ideas during the process to build off of and come up with more unique solutions.
Broaden the scope of your problem.
On the first day using the Design Thinking framework in class, I did not think I could think of anything truly unique. We were told to brainstorm new solutions to the phone, and my brain jumped to fixing the headphone jack or improving battery life. These ideas had been done before and simply weren’t innovative. Only when we began interviewing people to better understand how they use their phones did the ideas start flowing. It is so helpful to get a consumer to tell a story about their usage in order to begin to consider potential solutions. If you just think ‘how can I improve this?’ you are missing the crux of innovation – the user.
Not everyone is openminded.
Target markets exist because products and services are typically created for a specific group of people. This means that not everyone has to like and approve of your idea for it to be valid. Throughout the ideation and concept testing process I explained my project to friends and received harsh feedback. They rejected the idea of my project and told me that no one would be interested in such a thing. Through this feedback, while some of it was constructive, I needed to keep in mind that some people just are not openminded or have the need for my service, and that’s ok. It is helpful to get feedback from those not interested in your idea and those who are in order to address all issues with it.