Filtering the best ideas generated during ideation needs to be democratic and secure buy in from design team participants. Choosing the better ideas, elaborating on what they are and what impact they might have, and agreeing to these before priority mapping is the first step.
what is it
The Concept Canvas is a visual map of the key details of a design solution or concept.
why is it important
Ideation generates many many individual ideas. Some are great ones, some are good ones, some are less good. In order to select the best ideas, those that have traction across the design team, decisions need to be made collectively. Idea Cards are a first step in filtering out the less good ideas. They force the team to share more detail about initial ideas and identify the impact they may have on key stakeholders.
how to do it
- Share a small number of Idea Cards around the design team – you can decide how many based on the number of initial ideas from the ideation phase activities, the number of separate teams working on the same challenge, and how many ideas you want to take forward to concept selection stage.
- Write up Idea Cards for your favourite ideas, either individually or as a team. Provide more detail about the idea that was identified on post-it notes – perhaps add a small sketch to make it visual if possible, this will provide important decision making information when final idea/concept selection is done.
- Complete the sections on Stakeholders and Impact on each card – this is important additional information that can help decision making at the idea/concept selection stage.
- Collect the completed idea cards together, ready to use on the next stage of filtering – Concept Priority Mapping.
- 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 Idea Cards with photos as a record.
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