The Life Cycle of an Idea
As a visual thinker, it helps me understand something if I can draw it and see it visually. Visual representations can also reveal deeper meaning.
To launch an idea into the world as a finished thing it typically goes through four phases:
Incubation
Where you spend a lot of time thinking about the problem to be solved and early thoughts for the solution start to form.
Design
Planning and action in the creation of your solution.
Testing
Prototyping and testing the idea with users.
Refinement
Getting all the small details right for launch.
In reality the journey of an idea is not linear. Instead I believe it more typically follows that of a stretched S-Curve.
A long starting period of very little real progress as the idea forms in your head and you take awhile to start the actual design work. But then all of a sudden, getting your idea in front of real people and testing prototypes produces a huge jump in understanding and progress in a very short time frame. Once you have something in front of you, the ways to improve it, that were previously hidden are now often obvious and immediate.
The process then ends with a long refinement period where these quick early prototypes are tightened up and made properly. This always takes a surprisingly long time, especially if manufacturing tooling or certification documentation is required to launch the idea properly. For anyone who has ever supported a Kickstarter campaign and watch the project updates announce delay after delay. Its usually because the refinement process is always longer than they thought.
Now the reality maybe that no idea is ever really finished and could always be made better, so the complete launch process might be a series of back to back S-Curves, forming steps on a staircase towards completion.
The Objectives of a Good Creative Process:
Accelerate Idea Incubation - Over half a project development time can be wasted trying to get an idea even started. We refer to this as the fuzzy front end. To be quick you need a reason why, the tools to hand, courage to try and good examples to follow.
Increase Idea Quality - Good ideas come from having lots of ideas and a robust decision making process.
Maintain a High Development Rate - The goal is to get an idea out to market as soon as possible. To do that you need to focus on the activities that get you up the progress curve as quickly as possible and ensure the whole team is working to support each other.
Accelerate Error Discovery & Correction - Rush to test! Now that you can see a rough shape of the journey ahead, try to rush to prototype testing as soon as you can if you want to make any real progress and discover what’s going to go wrong.
Be cautious of any development model that gives equal weighting to every stage in the process, they are not equally valuable or equally time consuming.
Reduce Total Development Time - Try and do all this as quickly as you can!
Reduce Risk (& Ultimately Complete Failure) - Product failure is a failure of process. Keep a close eye on the team, ensure they are being rigorous in their methods and know both HOW to do something and WHY they are doing it.