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Task
Task 1: Generating Design Proposals
This task is about generating ideas and thinking about how to test them. It relates to our section on What is Design. In this task you generate ideas to meet a particular user need. Ideally you should do this on a working real-life project or product, but if you aren’t in a position to, you should spend 5 minutes before starting coming up with a plausible fictional project to use.
This task assumes that you have identified some specific problems or user needs and are starting to think about designs that could meet these problems or needs.
Step-by-step
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As a group, agree on the need you’ll focus on. Check that your need doesn’t imply a particular solution or isn’t written in a way that justifies an idea you’ve already had.
- Create a 4×5 grid on a piece of A4 paper. As a group, you should now draw a proposal in each box which might satisfy that user need. The aim here is to fill the grid and the drawings can be very simple.
In order to generate enough proposals try to think about different approaches to satisfying that need. You could think about technological solutions (how could cutting edge tech help: artificial intelligence, virtual reality, smartphone apps), could there be a physical product that solves the problem, what about education or organisational restructuring, maybe there could be a policy change that solves the problem? Note all of these ideas down.
- Once you have filled the grid, as a group, pick the three most promising ideas from your grid. To pick the most promising ideas ask yourself:
- Which ideas do you believe could have the biggest impact?
- Which ideas do you believe could be the quickest to test?
- Which ideas have you never seen before in the world?
- As a group, reflect on the following questions. What did you learn from this activity? Was anything surprising? Or particularly challenging? What would you do differently if you were to do this again?