This tool is for the team to collectively identify the best of the many ideas. Quality of ideas is what we seek from this exercise. The best ideas will have been captured on idea cards and this is a way to further narrow down these. This is convergent thinking in action and generates team commitment to those that are collectively judges as the best ideas.
what is it
The Concept Priority Map is a visual map of the best ideas and solutions showing how much impact and how difficulty implementing the idea might be.
why is it important
Co-creating ideas together is a way for everyone in the wider design team to contribute their ideas following the research and empathy phase. Narrowing down the number of ideas focuses on activity and resources around the best ones. Everyone likes to own and promote their own ideas, but for an idea to be adopted it's important that there is buy-in for it to progress. It is important to let go of your own idea, and support those that have traction within the design team. This helps build empathy and buy-in from participants and is a powerful tool to show wider stakeholders that individual issues are part of the bigger, wider picture that the design challenge is addressing. Some ideas are more viable and feasible than others, some address human needs better and is more desirable than others. Making these judgements and trade-offs is difficult so this tool helps to do that.
how to do it
- Position the Concept Priority Map on a wall space where the team can gather around it.
- Take each of the Idea Cards that were generated and after explaining its content to the team ask the team where on the concept priority map axis they think it should be placed.
- Group and cluster similar idea cards as appropriate. Discuss the groupings so everyone has a clear understanding.
- Give team members a small number of sticky dots (say three or five depending on how many idea cards have been generated) to use as voting tools. Ask each team member to vote for their favourite ideas by placing a sticky dot on those they select.
- The idea cards with the most votes are those that collectively have the greatest support. These are the ones to move forward with into implementation.
- Write any key questions or discussion points on post-it notes, one per note, and post them in a separate area for later reference.
- Capture the completed concept Priority Map with photos as a record
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