brainstormingben-blog

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Prototyping

Congratulations you have made it far along the creative journey. You have used head and heart research to create insights and develop challenge statements. You have also gone through a comprehensive ideation process using different techniques, followed by a difficult convergence process, leaving you with an idea that captures your passion and excitement. Now what?

Once you have an idea it is essential to put it to the test through prototyping. Initially I just thought that prototypes are physical models of products, but there are many different ways to prototype beyond something physical. Products or services can be prototyped through a multitude of platforms ranging from a sketch to physically acting it out. While the forms of prototyping can certainly differ, prototypes are always geared towards testing the effectiveness of an idea. The feedback following prototypes allows you to see flaws in your idea as well as the strengths. During the Kroger challenge, our idea was a pocket based technology geared towards creating a higher quality and more inclusive shopping experience for shoppers with dietary restrictions. Even though this was a technology based idea, our most successful prototype was acting the interface out on a whiteboard. After using it ourselves we had a friend use it for the first time and we were able to hear her feedback on what she liked and didn’t like about the structure of our application.

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Convergence

One of the toughest parts of the creativity process is convergence. For so long there is a mentality of saying no to nothing, losing all judgement, and encouraging all ideas. With a massive conglomeration of ideas varying in themes and levels of innovativeness, it is now time to decide. I have found it useful to organize ideas by challenge statements, similar to the Brain Writing exercise. Organizing ideas by challenge statements essentially groups ideas by specific goals, making it easier to find the best ideas under each goal. While there is no set formula for convergence it is critical to judge ideas with criteria. During our converging stage of BQ, I created a spreadsheet with a rubric which we used to score our top ideas. There is a lot of value to this method because it is structured, but I found a rubric alone to be insufficient. What I found to be more important than a set criteria in a rubric is the raw passion had for the idea. There were ideas that scored well on our rubric that no one was exceptionally passionate about, and because of this those ideas were eliminated because it would be awful pouring so much time and care into something that didn’t even make you excited.

A big hurdle during convergence is the inevitable conflicts that will arise. Conflict can incredibly constructive when approached correctly, yet it can also be very destructive. Having civil arguments can be great because it points out flaws in ideas, thus allowing for ideas to be strengthened. It is essential to be sure that there is nothing personal in the nature of arguments. The conflict needs to be directed at the ideas entirely or else there will be hurt feelings and a damaged team dynamic.

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Ideation

Ideation was one of the most exciting themes of the semester. At first, brainstorming was a difficult task for me because I was very focused on creating only what I considered to be good ideas, which really restricted my creativity. I began to get good at brainstorming as I began to go for quantity, deferring any judgement, seeking novelty and accepting bad ideas. Using the techniques taught in the earlier stages of class, my group and I began to create ideas for the Kroger challenge long before any ideation was assigned. Even though this was premature, it showed the high ambition that all of us possessed. While large masses of post-it notes filled with ideas from initial brainstorming methods were certainly helpful, I felt stuck. At times these independent ideas lacked a sense of depth and expansion.

After assessing the situation completing both head and heart research I was able to use both my knowledge and observations to identify key problems. With these problems identified I was able to create insights followed solution oriented challenge statements. Challenge statements provide guidance for ideas because they express a specific goal. Brain Writing is a great way to develop more solution oriented ideas, since ideas are written in a three by three format on a sheet of paper with a challenge statement as a header. In the case of BQ, this exercise was particularly useful because it added a needed sense of structure to our final stages of creativity. Ambiguity is essential to any creative process because it allows for uniqueness and growth; however, during the later stages goal oriented techniques are especially useful.

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Resilience

Resilience, in addition to empathy, takes guts. I am someone who appears to be confident, yet when I fail I find it tough to get back on my horse. There are certain types of failure that I have no problem rebounding from including virtually everything except for rejection failure. In fact, this is the one type of failure that I didn’t discuss in my failure log, both because it doesn’t happen as often to me and because when it does it truly takes a toll on me. When I think back on all of the failures I had during my first year at Miami there is one that particularly sticks out. There is no club that I wanted to be a part of more than the venture capital organization, Redhawk Ventures. As someone who has a passion for entrepreneurship and finance, there was nothing more interesting to me than working with student ran startups. I took the interviewing process very seriously, clearly expressing my passion and motivation for entrepreneurship. The first round of interviews went very well and I was invited back for a second round, where the initial list of applicants was reduced from over to 100 to less than 15. I was so excited, and I honestly thought I was going to make the cut. 

This second interview was very different from the first, instead of broad questions I was asked technical questions about topics like market sizing and scaling. I was left feeling hopeless unable to provide sound answers, because these were things that I just had no knowledge of. Shortly after the interview I found out that I did not make the cuts and I was truly devastated. I wanted this badly, and I was left feeling like a failure. I let go of my dream of joining Redhawk Ventures because they rejected me. It wasn’t until the second semester that I was able to fully overcome this. I am not a failure because I failed. I never had any animosity with the club following my rejection, I simply had a poor outlook on the situation. I have had and in many ways, continue to have a tendency to shut when I face rejection. Change has begun, and I am working on being more resilient. I plan on going for Redhawk Ventures again in the fall, because I want to be a part of this organization even more now than I did last fall. I now see what was initially a painful rejection, as both motivation and as a powerful learning experience.

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Failing

This failure log was something that I was really torn on. I failed to maintain this log because I forgot to. It was only until I began working on my process memo that I realized that I needed to have one for my final portfolio. I considered making one that looked legitimate, I found that to not only be dishonest, but also contradictory. What good would this log be if I wasn’t honestly acknowledging my failures? Since it will be tough to recall every single failure I had, I am going to include some of the bigger failures from earlier this semester, as well as smaller recent failures.

Some of My Not So Epic Failures

-So as no surprise, the first failure I will discuss is not creating this log when I was supposed to.

Predicted Failure

Teach Back

Our Teach Back certainly didn’t go nearly as well as I had wished. While we didn’t receive a poor score, I just didn’t feel good about the quality of my work. We put the project off until the night before, which ended up being a serious problem because my flight from New York was delayed 3 hours, resulting in a late night meeting in King. The failure in this scenario was not the letter grade received, but rather the fact that we failed to have a plan that gave our team a sufficient amount of time to put forth our best foot forward. This falls under the predicted failure domain because we got a lot out of this experience. This experience in many ways was a wake up call for our group. Seeing how winging it will not cut it, resulted in our team staying ahead of the eight ball on the remaining projects during BQ.

Version Failure

Pitchbox

When I volunteered to be our team’s representative for the pitchbox I had no plan for how I wanted to express our idea. The first go was certainly rough as I nervously summarized our idea, afraid of the team’s criticism. The team then asked questions and gave some feedback which allowed me to reflect on how I could’ve presented this better. As I gave pitch after pitch to the following groups, I was able to make adjustments along the way, ultimately resulting in a more confident and compelling pitch. My experience pitching our idea many consecutive times and receiving questions and feedback allowed me to see where I failed. I was able to make small incremental improvements each go around, ultimately resulting in a strong final pitch.

Common Failure

My Alarm

I’m still sour about this. After a late Tuesday night in Farmer with my team, I got back to my room like an exhausted zombie and set my alarm for 7:30 PM instead of 7:30 AM. I woke up to a call from my teammate Jack at 8:35, and I knew right away that I was in for a rough morning. I raced to my BUS 104 lab arriving just before 8:50. I apologized to my instructor and she was very understanding, but I received a poor grade on the assignment since I missed the instructions at the beginning of the lab. Since this, I have eliminated all set alarm times past 11:30 AM to prevent this from happening again.

Abject Failure

My Letter

One of the most exciting parts of this semester has been bringing back the Alpha Chapter of Sigma Chi to Miami. We were kicked off a bunch of years ago because of hazing and other horrible occurrences. After a long wait our national headquarters selected a group of men who can truly live the fraternity’s values, without sacrificing their individuality or morals. Prior to initiation we had to read a letter in front of many of our alumni, describing what we would do for the betterment of our chapter. Embarrassingly, I accidentally threw out this letter while I was cleaning my room of papers from the first semester. When called upon I explained my situation, and even though they weren’t explicitly upset, I was disappointed because I felt like I let down myself and my brothers.

Discouraged Failure

The Barn

Since all of the Sandler boys are now in college, my parents decided to downsize to a smaller home. The house that we are moving into is a colonial with multiple barns on the property, some of which need work. Originally we were planning on hiring builders to do this, but I asked if they would let me do it since I love these types of projects. They wanted me to look into how much time would go into this and gave me a week to decide if I really wanted to go through with it. I spent less than 20 minutes doing internet searches and found that even for an expert this would be a long tough project. That day I called my parents and told them I didn’t want to do it. Since then they have a hired a company to do the renovation. I can’t express how much I regret this. I feel like I am such a lazy person for not doing something that I love just because it would be tough. I was very stressed that week from other school work which could have influenced my decision not to take on the project, and I was unable to make a level headed decision on this. My regret in the weeks to follow lead me to starting a google doc filled with outdoor furniture that I plan on making during the summer, including a large picnic table and metal chairs to go around a fire pit.

Glorious Failure

Jeopardy

On the last day of class we played two epic rounds of Creativity Jeopardy. For some reason I was feeling especially energetic and competitive, perhaps I was just too into it. At first our team (Team Eggplant) was passively going after questions, but as the other teams started to get far ahead of us, it took it upon myself to put us back in the game. I started aggressively answering questions, and in many cases I answered these incorrectly. After the first round we were in the dark with a negative score, but we quickly rebounded back into the light during the early stages of the second game. Team Eggplant began to see lots of success from our aggressive style and upon the final Jeopardy we waged all of our points as a last ditch effort to come in first place. We answered the question incorrectly, extinguishing our fire that was our impressive comeback.

Learning Failures

All of the above, and really and failure in general is a learning failure. Different failures can vary in severity, yet all failures result in some lesson learned. In class we were told that failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor. This really resonated with me because when I felt the pain of failing it was tough for me to see any immediate upside. Every single success that I have had, minor or major, wouldn’t be possible without past failures.

[brainstormingben-blog]

No human ever became interesting by not failing. The more you fail and recover and improve, the better you are as a person. Ever meet someone who’s ALWAYS had EVERYTHING work out for them with ZERO struggle? They usually have the depth of a puddle. Or they don’t exist.

Chris Hardwick

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Empathy

I can confidently say that there is nothing covered over the course of the semester that had a more profound impact on me than empathy. At first, I didn’t understand the relevance of empathy to the creative process. I always thought of empathy as an important interpersonal skill with no creative applications, yet as I began to use it in the BQ process I began to understand the critical role that it plays. 

This realization began as my teammates and I visited Kroger to complete our Journey Mapping assignment. We observed each other’s shopping habits and my teammates noticed that it took me almost four times as long to shop since I had to read every ingredient of every item due to my life threatening allergies. Since this was routine for me, I didn’t think anything of it; however, I was astonished to see how my teammates were taken back and wanted to help improve my shopping experience. It was beyond feeling bad for me, I could sense that they were really on my side feeling my frustrations rather than just observing them. They were eager to find a sound solution to make my experience better. Their ability to be empathetic wasn’t just critical to our final idea for Kroger, it was enlightening to me. From this I have experienced a shift in opinion on the creative applications of empathy. This changed how I viewed problems, now seeing them as disguised opportunities. This change in mindset proved to be especially beneficial throughout the course of the Kroger challenge. More significantly, this mentality has influenced my development as a person beyond academic applications. Viewing problems as opportunities creates a more positive and effective outlook on life. I am certainly not the most empathetic person in most rooms, but I can confidently say that I am working to consider the emotional needs of others more in my everyday life.

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Landscaping

Before implementing landscaping for the BQ process, we were assigned to landscape something of our choice. My landscaping selection was improving on campus al la carte dining options. This assignment marked a significant milestone for me because for the first time I was able to tackle a specific topic that had some sense of importance for me. 

 I was consistently disappointed with the long wait times at these dining facilities, and I knew that there were ways to make improvements. Normally, I would have resorted to my quick problem solving habits; however the steps involved with landscaping required a more thorough process. First, declare the known and the unknown. Declaring what was known was easy for me, but considering what I need to know was a unique experience for me. I typically run with what I know, without considering unknown information, largely because this is an easier way to solve problems. Following this step, I sought out information from regular online searches, as well as from scholarly sources. General internet searches allowed me to get some solid answers to many of the questions that I had, and the scholarly sources provided more in depth confirmation. Perhaps the most unique part of landscaping was the expert interview. Sure, I have done online research before, but never have I actually interviewed someone who is an expert in the respective field. In this case the expert who I interviewed was a freshman cashier at the Scoreboard market. Our discussion completely changed my thoughts on potential solutions. The bulk of my online and scholarly research supported the benefits of tipping front of the house staff; however, Raven said that this would most likely not influence the wait times since the back of the house staff would not have any financial benefit from tips. She was also able to identify several key problems that I was not aware of including understaffing and long lines at the paying station during peak hours. My expert interview with Raven turned out to be the most useful step, as she was able to provide specific insights that I wouldn’t have been exposed to if it wasn’t for our discussion.