I know fast. I moved to San Francisco right after graduation and started an internship at IDEO two days later. Before I knew it, a summer of intensely accelerated projects had ended and grad school had begun. My abrupt transitions have taught me to stay on my toes, so I was ready for this.
Well, I thought I knew fast. Then came my first real design blitz. A blitz is about doing the whole design process in one week. Interviews and in context observations were to be completed and synthesized over the weekend. Once back in the classroom, we would have three hours to capture our insights, identify needs, develop “how might we” questions, brainstorm solution spaces around those and finally prototype and role play a final concept. To save you the trouble of re-reading all of that, yes, we were given [less than] three hours to create a solution from our collected insights.
Relevant to the topic of the course, Possession/s, the theme for the blitz was peer-to-peer commerce and community. We hit the streets interviewing shoppers and sellers at garage sales, flea markets, and thrift stores. We collected a range of information from these participants and discovered many interesting behaviors that we wouldn’t have if we hadn’t have been there first hand, in the action.
So what did I learn? Everyone is a little crazy. This is a reoccurring observation that I learned while at IDEO. It’s not meant to be a bad thing, but it is certainly true. Quirky behaviors are packed with insights waiting to be discovered. They become the best stories to share in the downloading process and often lead to the most successful innovations. Perhaps the more accurate, IDEO way to describe this is trait is the “extreme user” in all of us. In design research, these are the people of the highest interest.
Our Findings
We observed a general lack of organization and ambiguous interactions between buyers and sellers. Prices were often unclear, and the presentation seemed haphazard. We saw an opportunity to improve organization and presentation of goods, in order to increase credibility of the seller and appeal of the goods.
Our Solution
A product that combines an instant cash register/bar code system with a professional-looking price gun, the Sale-O-Max 3000®, if you will.
The uniformity and clarity of the price tags make the sale seem more credible and professional. The portability of the device lets the seller monitor and participate in the sale without interruption. The gun also keeps a tally of sales, providing convenient accounting and organization. And of course, the Sale-O-Max 3000® accepts all major credit cards.
If you can’t tell, we had a lot of fun with this process. Abnormal time constraints aside, the blitz process is a valuable exercise for understanding the design research process. After this crash-course of the IDEO process, I have an even better understanding of how to effectively probe information in observations as we begin to dig deeper into the course.
