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
