Ideating for extreme users
Disneys creative strategy tried and tested
I think we can all agree, when it comes to ideating for extreme users it’s something to get pretty excited about right? It’s a chance to escape the norm of target groups of specific users and a chance to ideate some more interesting/out there ideas from great insights — potentially otherwise left untouched. This past week we had a go at the “Disney method” developed by Robert Dilts and based on Walt Disney’s original ideation methods in an extreme user ideation session.
Walt Disneys ability to connect innovation and business was unquestionable, he unconsciously laid the groundwork for a creative technique that would proceed him as a standalone method with three main categories; The dreamer, the realiser and the critic. It’s said that Disney had mastered all three roles perfectly, being able to switch between the three when suited and achieve visions that were unusual during his time.
“…there were actually three different Walts: the dreamer, the realist, and the spoiler. You never knew which one was coming into your meeting.”
Maybe the most defining part of his methodology was the involvement of others through role-playing. In what we now call cross-functional teams, Disney was successful in realising the potential of his employees through deep role-playing sessions before the ideation session had even started. This is a walkthrough of my first experience of using the Disney method and its outcomes.
Although the method was not fully developed by Disney himself, he managed to bridge the gap between imagination and reality by unlocking the minds capabilities to dream and form unexpected ideas from existing problems http://www.designorate.com/disneys-creative-strategy/
An introduction to roleplaying
Before beginning Disney’s creative strategy we had to divide our room into four areas, this meant creating creative spaces for each of the three roles and an extra space to switch off between roleplaying and ideating.
The dreamer’s space was set up to be our dream inspiring working condition. We made sure our space had fresh air, loads of natural light, loads of space to work and walk around in and of course some sweets.
The Realisers space was more technical, this is where we needed loads of post its, wall space and drawing equipment to make our ‘dreams’ more concrete.
The critic’s space was less inspiring… it was closer to the end of the room in order to reflect the mindset of the role. Narrow and more decisive.
Once the role-play begun we were guided through each space into three different roles in order to ‘settle in’. In the dreamer’s corner, we were asked to think of positive influences in our lives, in the realisers square we had to think of personal situations that were solved through practical thinking. The penultimate critique corner was focused on analysing a situation (given to the group by the moderator) more critically than the other areas. Finally, we were taken into the fourth space for a short interval.
A more indepth look at the responsibilities of each of the three roles can be found here.
Jumping in
After the preparation stages, we were ready to start ideating. The actual role play was just about to begin. We set up in the dreamer’s corner and decided to use the morphological box as the framework for our ideation session in order to realise our ideas of the problem.
We started with a table of categories for opportunity areas on our problem. We were tasked with doing as many ideas for each opportunity area as possible in 30 minutes. When the time was up we passed our table to the person on our right and were given another 30 minutes to build ideas from the table you had received. This was repeated until everyone in the team had contributed to every table.
The key of the dreamer’s corner was that ideas were able to be created without limitations, specifications or restrictions. Any and every idea went, it was a chance for us to come up with some serious (-ly funny) and brilliant ideas.
Get real
The second stage of the ideation process took us to the realisers square. Each of us became a realiser, where we had to pretend our ‘dreams’ were possible, and withdraw ideas whilst asking ourselves the following questions:
- What needs to be done or said?
- What is needed for the implementation?
- How do you feel about this idea?
- What is already available?
- Can the approach be tested?
By asking ourselves this set of questions we were able to check each idea thoroughly before passing it onto the critics. The key to this stage is to separate dull and innovative approaches. It could possibly turn out that an approach that seems unrealistic is the most innovative of the bunch!
In this stage we actually began to generate more ideas from the ideas in the dreamers stage. These ideas were more grounded and realistic, we all started to get quite excited by some of the concepts being generated to be honest so it was hard to remain in our role as a ‘realiser’.
Design & destroy
The final stage of our session was set in the critiques space. This was our teams chance to turn into our own worst critics and deal with each of our proposed solutions from the previous stages with constructive analysis. Some of our questions included:
- What could we improve?
- What are the opportunities and risks?
- What have we overlooked?
- How do we think of a proposal?
The key of this stage of the process was to keep critiquing until there were no more questions left to ask, it was then we were are able to start drawing up proposals of the solutions that survived the realiser and critique stages.
The result
The main takeaways from this method are that it’s really refreshing to be constantly reminded there are no limitations in the early stages of the session. Our team was able to ideate entertaining and bizarre solutions to our problem without feeling confined by the usual limitations. The rest of the session felt similar to methods I’ve previously used in other projects but were definitely not the same. For example — in other projects, we have used charts to judge awesomeness against feasibility but the Disney method felt more open to interpretation as a group discussion.
The first stage focused on the creative aspect and sharing creative ideas and solutions. The second stage focused on reality and how to turn the idea into an action plan and finally the third stage aims to identify the weakness in the idea and overcome it in the final plan. http://www.designorate.com/disneys-creative-strategy/
Issues & potential
No method comes without needing some improvements or wiggle room. I believe that creativity thrives when limitations are put in place — such as the 30 minute time limit for ideation in this method. However, during this 30 minutes the team often fell into conversation about one idea and that may of been distracting from the overall task. Perhaps a no speaking rule could be enforced over a shorter time frames?
Once again, I felt as if lots of time was lost in moments of decision making and debating especially in the Realisers stage, we found ourselves following rabit holes even when we were going to withdraw the idea. This is a possible point that could be improved on if we were to use this method again. Maybe people could let me know how they would solve this?
Over all i’m interested in exploring different ideation methods and seeing how they can be applied to different projects; are there certain methods for certain situations — if so, when is best to apply them? So far in my internship I’ve come across a range of methods that are similar in some aspects and very different in others. I’m going to continue to explore these different methods and hopefully share what I find!
I love feedback and conversations so if you have any thoughts, comments or questions comment below or feel free to get in touch! ☺️
