Let's talk about #2 in the chain -- the concepting meeting with your peers.
Unless you're leading a brainstorm, chances are you're going to have to conform to the team's working process. But I can tell you that even if they aren't rigid in how the session is set up, it's going to probably conform to the following template. In a one-hour session, it will likely break down as follows:
A. Level-setting and establishment of goals (5 minutes). Reiterate key insight and direction established in the project kickoff meeting. Ideally, "make manifest" the result of said meeting, such as: "In one hour we will have three strong ideas that we will place after the meeting in sketch form with written rationales to support them. And on Tuesday, we will present those rationales to the account manager, who will approve two to be executed for a client review on Friday." It's amazing how setting your expectations at the start of this kind of meeting will foster a result.
B. Ideation (30 minutes). Blue-sky brainstorming around how to solve the client's business problem. This is a critical area that I'm going to be working through in the coming weeks to get some new tools in your brainstorming arsenal.
Some techniques that may be applied in this type of short-term, 1 hour meeting would include:
- Mind mapping/concept mapping, for design projects
- Design sketching and storyboarding
- Word lists
- Picture association
- Role playing
When things get really dire and the well is running dry, we bring out the more esoteric brainstorming principles, which I've been culling from great ideation resources such as the book Thinkertoys and the IDEO card deck:
- "Superstructing," a.k.a. futurecasting
- Physical prototyping
- Idea inversion
- Exquisite corpses
- Brutethinking (oft practiced by Sagmeister and David Carson -- though they wouldn't call it that)
There is also "the art of procrastination," a.k.a. relaxation techniques to free up your mind and let your subconscious crunch on the problem. I lean on it hard when I am totally, completely stuck, but you can't use it in a collaborative brainstorm. The same goes for contextual inquiry, which can be a corrective measure for a brief/client input that doesn't align with how the audience actually feels and behaves.
Depending on who's leading the meeting, you may be pushed into a brainstorming method that is at odds with your own. For example: I am strong at mind-mapping and word listing, but am less productive with picture/word association and role playing. So if you gravitate towards just one or two of these brainstorming methods, you'll need to practice the others at least enough to be comfortable with them in a group setting.
Over the next few weeks, we will sample using each of these methods in a collaborative setting, so you can gain some comfort in using them. And as we get towards the end of our class in March, I'm going to bring out the really big guns from some agencies I've worked at so you can sample how a very long-form brainstorm might play out over a few hours -- and the quality of the resultant ideas.
C. Evaluation and Synthesis (15 minutes). Explore the relationships between the chosen ideas, then see which ones can be synthesized together.
This is a great place to use what's called the SCAMPER checklist. They were suggested by Alex Osborn and arranged into this handy mnemonic device by Bob Eberle:
- Substitute something
- Combine it with something else
- Adapt something to it
- Modify or Magnify it
- Put it to some other use
- Eliminate something
- Reverse or Rearrange it
If you have a few ideas that seem really strong, putting them through this checklist will help bulletproof them -- and maybe even create some brand new ones.
Many agency staffers use this checklist intuitively, with out even knowing it. But until you've got it beaten into your brain, it helps to have this written out.
D. Cull the Ideas Down (5 minutes). Based on your intention that you set at the start of the brainstorming meeting, cull the ideas down to the ones you need to move forward with. Place the rest of your material in a "parking lot" for potential use later in the project. It's amazing how often these "killed" ideas end up weaving into and enhancing the project later in the process.
E. Next Steps (5 minutes). What will we carry forward to show to the creative director, account manager, and possibly even the client before we begin the process of making the design (in whatever media)? Do we have to give a verbal rationale? Show tight sketches of possible execution ideas? Must we give proof of the ideas fitting within budget by presenting estimates from vendors? Do are developers need to check feasibility of creating what we ideated within the time frame/budget?
The questions here usually transcend what ideas are great -- which is very, very important -- but you'll also need to talk to how they will fit within the project scope. As a copywriter that I worked with last year liked to say, "You can take a big idea and scale it down to fit, but you can't take a small idea and make it bigger." Keep inflating that flimsy balloon and it's going to pop.
Besides, if your idea is just big enough, you could convince your client and project team to part with a little bit more moolah for it to be realized.
As we start to share work in class, we're going to be prodding you with these kinds of questions, so you get used to feeling for the boundaries of specific kinds of design problems within a company's project scope.
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