Idea Generation Part 2
More!
How Might We’s
How might we make first items portable and easily accessible, especially with only one hand?
How might we heal injuries quickly without creating large amounts of packaging waste and disorganization?
Set Up
The day of the brainstorming session, Tate cancelled. Additionally, another person I had asked to come named Noah, didn’t show up without any warning or explanation. That left me with the following individuals:
Becan is a sophomore studying history and anthropology. He says he has used a first aid kit only once or twice at work.
Joan is a graduate student studying pharmaceutical sciences. While she hasn’t had to use a first aid kit regularly, studying pharmaceuticals has made her familiar with certain health codes and practices.
Josie is an undergraduate student who transferred into the graphic design program last year. While not very familiar with the design process yet, Josie is a naturally divergent thinker.
These three showed up to my apartment on Halloween afternoon ready to brainstorm and eat some pizza hut (that was the reward for their participation). The plan going in was as follows:
- I asked them to come for 1 hour
- The first 15 minutes were devoted to enjoying some pizza and warmup activities
- After that, I would conduct the actual brainstorming session for 30 minutes.
- Finally, the final 15 minutes would be organizing the post-it notes and voting on good ideas.
I put both large and small post-it notes by each seat, large for drawing their ideas, small for voting later on. I also supplied pens.
Warm Up
Loserball —
The first warm up was technically enjoying some pizza. We created small talk and got to know each other a little better.
Soon after, I began the first warm-up game: loserball. Loserball was a game that I learned from Tane Danger, and goes as such: all group members stand in a circle. One group member mimes holding a ball and has to throw it to another member of the group — but this group member cannot catch the ball, no matter what. After the group member doesn’t catch the ball, everyone in the circle cheers dramatically. And it continues.
We played this game for a few rounds, and afterwards I explained that it’s meant to show that this space is a supporting one, and that even bad ideas will be supported and maybe even helpful to me in the long run.
Original Warmup —
After establishing that all ideas are good ideas, I proceeded with my homemade warmup activity. I called it “10 Yard Dash,” and I asked each group member to remove 10 post it notes from the top of their pads. They did so. Then, I told them to quickly draw and write down the first 10 things that came to their mind, whether it had to do with first aid kits or not. The one and only criteria was that they had to both write a word and draw a picture for the concept (just like they would have to during the real session). I participated in this activity as well.
Josie got right to it. Becan took a little longer but got there, and Joan struggled significantly to come up with things to write and draw without any prompts. She eventually did it, but despite my gentle guidance, could not see the benefit to the exercise.
Brainstorm Session
After warmups, I finally gave the participants a brief rundown of what a brainstorming session is, how they needed to use the post it notes, and began the session.
First, I asked each person if they could describe a time that they needed to use a first aid kit. Becan recalled a time that he cut his hand on some sharp plastic packaging at his job at a grocery store, Joan remarked that she has never had to use a first aid kit but is somewhat familiar with OSHA regulations and lab kits, and Josie recalled a bike accident.
Then, I posed a broad “how might we” question:
“How might we treat injuries efficiently in a wide variety of places?”
Despite warmups, my group was still fairly confused. Their answers mainly consisted of “…use a first aid kit.” I quickly switched gears from radical to incremental innovation, asking, “how could the first aid kits you’ve experienced be improved?” Generally, they felt under-qualified to answer this question. Josie was able to come up with some ideas, but Becan and Joan were left scratching their heads. The best thing we got out of this portion was the idea to put menstrual products in a FAK.
In response to this, I transitioned to my first specific “how might we” statement. I described briefly that in my research up until the point, I had received one testimony far more than I had expected — a problem that many people had experienced was accessing the first aid kit with bleeding hands. I thought this was especially pertinent, considering that Becan’s story fell into this category. If I had received such overwhelming feedback that first aid kits are difficult to access with only one hand, I asked:
“How might we make first items portable and easily accessible, especially with only one hand?”
Finally, that prompt had the level of specificity that got people’s brains going. Josie suggested a lid that opens when you press down on it, because you can press with nearly every part of your body. She also suggested a kit with a foot pedal that opens the lid like a trash can. I was proud of her for this suggestion, as it was a great example of a solution that may seem silly, but is absolutely worth sharing. One of these ideas made it to the end.
We continued along this train of thought. Some of the options we considered were smashing the packaging and having it break, contents being stored outside of a box, magnetic items stuck to a refrigerator or metal wall, etc.
Switching directions, I described some of the problems presented by my interviewee Tina. She felt, along with a majority of survey respondents, that first aid kits were difficult to keep organized, especially with the amount of packaging waste they produced. I posed my second question,
“How might we heal injuries quickly without creating large amounts of packaging waste and disorganization?”
At this point, Becan and Joan exhibited the phenomenon of the “adjacent possible” multiple times — both of them would come up with the same idea, start writing it down, and then realize that they were on the same train of thought. Sometimes, it was because their ideas were good. One of those ideas is featured below.
Additionally, they felt that instructions would help greatly with organization.
After this, ideas began to slow down. In a last ditch effort, I attempted to have the participants brainstorm as characters from their favorite movies. This gave way to very few ideas, though, and I decided that my group had reached their limit.
Then, the three began to organize their ideas.
Here was the final arrangement:
And after they voted on good ideas:
Here are the last few good ideas that I haven’t included thusfar:
And that concluded our brainstorm session. We ended up with about 2.7 ideas per minute per person, and although it felt slow, we were much more productive than I originally thought.
Top 10 Ideas
