Get Crazy

Ideation, invention

Within the Design Lab, stakeholders and their interests are separated from designers.  Six to twelve people – selected for their openness to new ideas, not as representatives of stakeholders – spend 2 to 3 days sequestered in a separate Lab setting.  This separation allows all to “step back” and consider the system anew.  It opens up the space for ideas to flourish.

The “Get Crazy” step supports the ideation or invention of new ideas – as well as “re-imagining” existing or past ideas (e.g., finding “the good” in prior “bad” ideas.)

Design thinking can be developed in anyone via process techniques that have proven successful over time.  “Creativity” training leads the way with techniques such as: brainstorming, using metaphors, adding extreme whimsy, tolerating ambiguity longer that comfortable and our all-time favorite - standing assumptions on their heads!

Design lab participants can be chosen from within and from without the client system.  Creative ideas come from unusual connections, and the best way to get unusual connections is to cross-pollinate the Lab.  Designers should be chosen for their diversity of perspective, their creativity, their willingness to experiment with ideas, their tolerance for ambiguity and non-linear development, and their ability to have faith.  You can’t design with people who can’t suspend their disbelief for at least awhile in order to play with an idea.

  1. When thinking about potential designers, we often ask questions such as:
  2. Who has passion for dramatically improved client outcomes?
  3. Who is a great synthesizer?
  4. Who have you heard has unconventional ideas for this arena?
  5. Who asks “why?” or “what if…?” and “how could we…?”
  6. Who has the background to understand and advance creative financing ideas?

The “get crazy” part of the Design Lab generates creative ideas, and the process of finding them is not linear!  It is divergent thinking at its best -- iterative and messy on purpose.  Keeping designers in this place of “chaos” can and does yield breakthrough ideas.