Scoping the Design Challenge

Scoping is about defining the right challenge and addressing the real problem of the customer, without anticipating the solution.

The goal is also to get a common understanding of the challenge/ problem, together with the client and among the Design Thinking team. And to explore different perspectives in the team.

There are various techniques, like charetting and brain dump, which support this phase.

At the end of a project, the developed ideas and concepts will be measured against the previously defined challenge.

Make sure you understand it right and rephrase if necessary.

A first design mini-challenge: Design and draw a chair on a piece of paper.

A second design mini-challenge: Design and draw something comfortable to sit on.

Lesson learned:

Need and demand are key when phrasing a challenge. The phrasing of a design challenge influences the result.

What rules do you apply when defining a design challenge?

• The design challenge sets the scope for a Design Thinking project.
• The design challenge should have the right balance between open and closed phrasing.
• The design challenge needs to be aligned and defined together with the client.

Defining the challenge is a very important step.

The phrasing of the challenge significantly determines the potential solution space.

Finding the right balance between too open and too close phrasing is key:

• If the challenge is too open, the team might have difficulties to get operational.

• If the challenge is too close, too many potential solutions might get excluded a-priori.

It is crucial to ensure a common understanding of the challenge within the design team and with all stakeholders. Never consider this as a given!

There are techniques like charetting, which help to reframe and narrow down a design challenge.

Challenges:

• Sometimes, the design team does not have a common understanding of the topic.
• Sometimes, there is also a misunderstanding between the design team and stakeholders.

In those cases, it makes sense to do a reframing exercise on the challenge and rephrase it.

Sometimes, it is also a creative exercise to play around with the challenge.

Iteratively rephrasing and questioning the challenge, or parts of it, might lead to completely new solution spaces than initially in scope.

This technique is a good way to ensure a common understanding of a challenge within a design team.

Write down the challenge in big letters and with sufficient space between the lines.

Underpin the key expressions within the challenge.

Let the team members do a brainstorming session on those expressions. Exchange their thoughts by pinning the brainstorming results close to the expressions.

At the very beginning of a project, it can be difficult to find the "right" design challenge.

Charretting allows the design thinking team to collaborate, and evaluate potential areas of interest for a given, and often unclear, project scope.

It can also be used to discuss with project sponsors, when the scope is fuzzy or unclear.

The word charrette may also refer to any collaborative session in which a group of designers draft a solution to a design problem.

While the structure of a charrette varies, depending on the design problem and the individuals in the group, charrettes often take place in multiple sessions in which the group divides into sub-groups.

Each sub-group then presents its work to the full group as material for further dialogue.

Such charrettes serve as a way of quickly generating a design solution, while integrating the aptitudes and interests of a diverse group of people.

The term charrette is thought to have originated from the Ècole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, in the 19th century. The word charrette is from the French for cart or chariot. It was not unusual for student architects to continue working furiously in teams at the end of the allotted term, up until a deadline. A charrette would be wheeled among the students to pick up their work for review while they, each working furiously to apply the finishing touches, were said to be working en charrette, or in the cart.

Group dynamics ensure that everyone contributes. Nobody wants to be the only one not providing any input.

With this exercise, we would like to capture everybody's current view on the challenge.

At the end we will have a wall of data, which reflects our collective mind and outcome regarding the design challenge.

This means that this exercise will also help us to create a common understanding of the challenge.

Furthermore, the wall of data will be a kind of guiding start for the exercises to come during this day.

In this exercise it is not about agreeing, it is about exploring different perspectives in the team.

This can also mean that the design team agrees to reframe the original challenge and phrase it differently.

Five minutes of silent brain dump on the topic.

Brains are like magnets. It is important not to share any thoughts at this point in time, so as not to affect the thoughts of other participants. This would limit the solution space for this exercise.

Use sticky notes to note thoughts, ideas, concerns, or anything that comes to your mind. It is important to capture your individual perspective in this challenge.

Then, go around the table and share your thoughts to create the wall of data.

Group the data, and find headlines for the different topics and patterns that arise.

Build clusters of notes, which belong thematically together. Give each cluster a headline.

This exercise works because everybody has different thoughts while considering the challenge.

It works because of group dynamics. Nobody wants to be the only one without a post-it (slight internal challenge).

Grouping helps to structure data and to identify common topics.

Plan enough time to share the results with cross-teams.