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Intro to Design Thinking

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Big Ideas

3:04 with Devin O'Bryan

There are several methods to generating big ideas. In this video, we’ll be creating small vignettes to get our ideas onto paper.

New Terms:

  • Big Idea – a holistic and open-ended solution to a user’s pain based in a user’s motivation or needs.
  • Feature – a prescriptive, non-holistic response to a user’s pain based in technology.
  • Vignette – a brief but descriptive depiction of events.
  • “Getting Caught in the Weeds” – an idiom that refers to being distracted by details and losing sight of the intended purpose.
  • Self-compassion – allowing for kindness and mindful forgiveness of oneself during times of failure.

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    Big ideas, these are the real differentiators of a user's experience. 0:00
    Big ideas are holistic and open ended solution to user pain. 0:05
    They often use metaphor or analogies to describe the experience. 0:10
    For instance, have you ever described something as the Uber of something? 0:14
    Or maybe you've said it's sort of like if Google and fill in the blank teamed up. 0:19
    Big ideas are not the same as features. 0:25
    Features are instead prescriptive technology-based solutions 0:29
    to immediate interface problems. 0:33
    Let's try this, instead of the Uber of something example for a big idea. 0:36
    A feature version of this would be, 0:41
    imagine cars moving all over a map on your screen. 0:44
    With their distance formatted as time displayed above them. 0:48
    Features aren't bad, but they tend to only address smaller interface-based 0:52
    subsets of the larger experience issues. 0:57
    There's a phrase, getting caught in the weeds. 1:02
    It's used to explain this moving into details too quickly and 1:05
    missing out on the larger purpose. 1:08
    It refers to being on a journey, losing your focus, and moving off the well-worn 1:11
    and trusted path that you should be on, and then getting lost as a result. 1:16
    When you've been caught in the weeds, 1:21
    it's important to mention, you are not your user. 1:24
    Meaning there may be something that you want to add to the experience. 1:28
    But this is all about stable Sarah's needs, not yours. 1:32
    When in doubt, go back to your empathy map and keep your ego in check. 1:36
    Now that we've defined big ideas versus features, take 20 minutes. 1:42
    To draw a big idea vignette that references something in the real 1:48
    world that could solve your users' pain. 1:53
    A vignette is a brief but descriptive depiction of events. 1:56
    A quick note, when ideating, be self compassionate. 2:02
    Self compassion is allowing for kindness and 2:07
    mindful forgiveness of oneself during times of failure. 2:11
    If you're taking risks, which you should be, 2:15
    you need to stay judgment free of your drawing ability and your initial concepts. 2:18
    Creativity will be most easily fostered in a judgment free zone, 2:24
    the time for constraints will come later. 2:30
    And just as a reminder, stable Sarah needs greater consistency, 2:33
    transparency, and assurance. 2:37
    And after our ideation session, 2:39
    our big idea will address all three areas of pain to varying degrees. 2:41
    We will personify the idea as though it were a human guide for 2:47
    the process, and call it the seasoned concierge. 2:52
    In the next video, 2:57
    we will get to know our new friend on the checkout process by creating a storyboard. 2:58

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