Theme #5. Reflection

Last week we had two lectures. The first lecture covered following questions: how to come up with idea, how to define the problem, how to solve the problem, how to evaluate, validate and communicate the idea. I found the lecture very interesting as we consider the process from generation ideas to bringing it in practice in depth.

The summary of lecture helped me to understand main idea aspects: generation idea, filtering idea, validation idea, evaluation idea and communication the idea.

The main conclusions that I made after the lecture:

1. Defining problem is the key thing to come up with the idea.

2. There are 5 questions formulated by Cisco company to define how innovative the idea:

   • Does it address a real pain point?

   • Will it appeal to a big enough market?

   • Is the timing right?

   • If we pursue the idea, will we be good at it?

  • Can we exploit the opportunity for the long term, or would this market commoditize so quickly that we wouldn’t be able to stay profitable? (https://hbr.org/2009/09/inside-ciscos-search-for-the-next-big-idea)

3.Three components of idea validation – proof of concept, existing of potential customers and fund to realize the idea.

The second lecture develop and support points from the previous lecture. The topic was design research. The aim of design research is to shape prototype to answer the particular question. So in other words, prototyping is used to solve the problem. But prototype as it is, is not a decision, it can be a way to generate empirical data that we don’t have to obtain the solution of claimed problem/question of the research. The teacher explained how to used design method and role of prototype using example of research papers for this lecture.

Definition and meaning of prototype was not really clear for me, that’s why I checked additional sources of information.

In dictionaries prototype means an original model on which something is patterned, a standard or typical example, a first full-scale and usually functional form of a new type or design of a construction. So basically synonym word of prototype is pattern. How is it related to the research? The answer I found in the article by “Prototyping as a powerful tool in a user centered innovation process” Tiago Barros and Paulo Melo. “Prototyping is important to bring abstract ideas to a more concrete level […] While prototyping, developers face several limitations that could not be identified while they were discussing abstract concepts only. Apart from that, prototypes bring light to new aspects and opportunities that have not been considered.” I think that, on the one hand, prototype is interim step to prove the feasibility of suggested concept, on the other hand, prototype is base for further investigation and probably new hypothesis as it was mentioned above “prototypes bring light to new aspects and opportunities.” So prototype testing is crucial for exploring limitations and making appropriate changes.

Sources:

1.    Guido Jouret “Inside Cisco’s Search for the Next Big Idea” https://hbr.org/2009/09/inside-ciscos-search-for-the-next-big-idea

2.  “Prototyping as a powerful tool in a user centered innovation process” Tiago Barros , Paulo Melo, IHC+CLIHC '11 Proceedings of the Companion Proceedings of the 10th Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems and the 5th Latin American Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, page 33-35