Tag Archives: #BusinessNeeds

The Ideation Process

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In this week’s class our group brainstormed ideas for the semester project. Our main objective during this session was identifying everyday problems that people face. We delved deeper into the process and targeted college students. At the end of the session, our group came up with three How Can We statements:

#1. How can we help young professionals tie a tie more efficiently?

#2. How can we help college students stop losing their items (phones, wallets, and keys)?

#3. How can we help young adults have more optimal audio experience?

Through these statements, we were able to think of products that could address the issues. For example, in addressing statement #2, we came up with a stopper that clips onto the bottom part of a T-shirt and the pant pocket to prevent things from falling out. As a group we decided to spend more time outside class to brainstorm ideas and coming up with more HCW statements. I think the HCW statements are a great starting point for a business idea because they are empathetic to the consumer’s needs and asks a question that can be answered in a variety of ways.

In an article from Science magazine, the authors argue that creativity is more efficient when there is a structure laid out or a framework to follow. The structure is clearly defined and may have constraints imposed. HCW statements fall under this type of creative process, since there is a sentence format to follow. Creating ideas from randomness, while still holding value, is seen as inefficient in problem-solving. I agree with the authors’ statement that creativity is “assessed by  the eyes of the beholder.” I believe both brainstorming creative ideas and coming up with an idea randomly are both effective. However, the ideas will need fine tuning as suggested in this article on evaluating business ideas.

The questions evaluate business ideas by placing them in reality. Are there enough resources? Do they address consumer needs? What are the positives and negatives of this business idea? Once you are able to answer all the questions posed, I believe your ideas will become more concrete and well defined. From this, you can set strategies for moving from the ideation phase to the prototyping phase.

There are several ways to help with the creative process. Forbes suggests individually working out and solving the problems and then meeting with your group to brainstorm. It’s important to note that brainstorming sessions can be ineffective unless certain guidelines are established. Another article from Entrepreneur suggests shying away from the need to be perfect and coming up with as many ideas, even if they’re bad. At the end of the day, I think we should try out whichever creative processes and stick with the one that work better for us.

Searching For Needs

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Businesses are created by an individual or multiple people because of an idea, an idea they believe in strongly because of the strengths they each hold as stated in the article, “10 Ways To Evaluate A New Business Idea”. These ideas are developed through sparks, which we learned from the second article, “Creative Sparks”, that there is a controversial thought on the nature of the creative process. The creation ideas that businesses have are through watching people’s struggles or their own personal struggles to realize what consumers will need. In the 60 minute video watched during class it was clear that being empathetic was the best way to understand what consumers truly value. These products or services are produced for consumers; therefore, we obviously need to understand these individuals in order to have them purchase these products or services.

During class we worked on an activity as a group to brainstorm needs that people have on the daily, we weren’t trying to create solutions yet because we didn’t want to narrow our brainstorming results. My group had come up with three ideas through the “How Can We” statements learned from the class that Design for America had spoken in. Our first idea was generated because we realized that many of our phones and laptops were being overcharged especially overnight as it was the best time to have them be charged but we wanted to figure out a way to time the charging so the product didn’t end up losing battery life. Thus, we came up with the statement, “How can we find a more efficient way to charge phones or laptops?” After discussing this first idea with an individual from another group we had changed the statement to, “How can we reserve battery life of an object to find a more efficient way to charge phones or laptops?” We agreed that the changed statement was still broad enough to solve the need in the future, yet had the specific details about the issue. The second idea was in regards to the need of better and cheaper public storage alternatives. Our last idea was to create a more efficient way to manage the PSI of objects. I believe our group did a good job on finding needs of individuals, but we do hope to continue thinking up of more needs in order to find a good product or service to solve for our final project.

After our class activity I wanted to find ways to come up with ideas for our final project. I had looked through various links and found two useful ones. The first one, “How to Find New Invention Ideas in Six Easy Steps” (http://www.inventions-handbook.com/new-invention-ideas.html) was helpful because it provided a list of steps to follow in order to create that spark of creativity. With this in mind, I plan on observing the niche I am and finding needs within the college sector. The second article, “5 Steps for Turning Your Invention Ideas Into a Product” (https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/77962) would be more useful once my group has found a need within the niche we are in. The one aspect that the article mentioned and I found particularly important was documenting the process. I like how Vishal had created a documentation process for each group on “Instructure Canvas”, I believe that it will be incredibly beneficial for every group to look forward and think back on future creations.