Concept design is an early phase of the design process that explores far-ranging design ideas which are plausible but which often set aside immediate technical and situational constraints in order to generate new options.

My article Concept Design Tools in Digital Web Magazine is an introduction for digital designers new to the concept design methods typically used by architects and industrial designers.

Background

In the 1960’s some designers became interested in more formal methods for handling the complex design projects of the time. Since then, the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction to a very humanistic approach, characterized by emphasis on multidisciplinary teams and simple tools like brainstorming. The current situation of design methods is summed up by John Chris Jones in an interview:

I think [design method's] steam, its social power, as yet slight, has been directed to the teaching of design and to research into existing design processes, and not much to the improvement of designing or of its results. This movement is thriving under the name “design research,” but I think it is in danger of putting rationality before intuition and of putting the new in the service of what exists, and has now become the obstacle to change.

In a small effort to put methods to use in a practical way and balance systems with humans, I’m starting to create simple concept design tools for digital designers, many of whom have not experienced the concept design activities typical of those in architecture or industrial design.

Frequently Asked Questions

When I present or talk about this work, I hear a lot of great questions, including “Why don’t you write an FAQ?” So here’s a list that I will fill in gradually. If you have a question, please send me an email: email (at) smartexperience.org

  • What is concept design?
    Concept design is an early phase of the design process that explores far-ranging design ideas which are plausible but which often set aside immediate technical and situational constraints in order to generate new options.
  • What do concepts look like in digital design?
    Here’s some examples:
    Product Development Concepts: One Laptop Per Child XO-2, Parking Angel, emosive, Charmr
    Emerging Concepts: Social Retailing, Aurora,
    Vision Concepts: Knowledge Navigator, Future Shock, The Aura
  • Isn’t this a fundamental activity that everyone learns in design school?
    Yes, this work is fundamental to the design discipline, but many digital designers don’t have formal design educations and lack this experience.
  • What’s the difference between concept design and conceptual design?
    Probably nothing, but I prefer the term concept design because it says what it is, the design of concepts. I’ve never been sure of what is supposed to happen in a conceptual design stage, are we conceptually designing? And what does that mean??
  • What’s the difference between a concept and an idea?
    I use the term idea to mean the simplest of design thoughts, like “Skype makes phone calls by sending video over the Internet.” Concepts go further to illustrate essentially how a product or service would work, like “Skype is free, downloadable software that acts as an address book, phone software, and more. Skype charges for calls to landlines, and customers manage their accounts using a website.“
  • Are there different types of concepts?
    Concepts are usually differentiated by the time span they cover. The three basic types are Product Development, Emerging, and Vision, which are defined in the article Concept Design Tools.
  • What are concept design tools?
    They are simple exercises that help generate concepts. They are similar to design methods, but more simple so that they are more accessible to more people.
  • How do your concept design tools differ from brainstorming?
    The two are closely related. Brainstorming aims to produce a high quantity of ideas and rely on the facilitator to frame the question in a way that generates useful ideas. Many of the tools I offer help to frame the question in structured ways that focus the ideas, and in new ways that may help generate different ideas.
  • Are concepts the same as concept models?
    No. Concept models are typically ball-and-stick charts that illustrate the essential concepts of a product, project, or other domain. You can learn more about them in this presentation on concept models from Dan Brown.
  • When does the concept design stage happen?
    First let me say that everyone has their own process and so I suggest thinking about how to fit concept design as an activity into your process. In general, it falls after discovery activities like research and research analysis. Once you’re researched your audience, technical constraints, business goals, operating environment, etc. you can use this information as constraints when generating concepts. After generating concepts, you can analyze and test them for how well they help you reach your goals. As you reduce the number of concepts you start to add detail to them until you arrive at one concept that you develop fully into a product or service.
  • We used the Question the Brief tool and found it very effective in generating concepts. Now what do we do?
    Usually the next step is to analyze and/or prototype the concepts you generated. I would start by asking, “What are the factors that will most influence the success of this effort?” Factors could include cost, feasibility, effectiveness, and audience adoption.

    Often we create a spreadsheet or a grid and assign values to each factor for each concept. For some of these factors, like cost and feasibility, you can start to estimate the values by working with others in your organization or with your advisers. This might immediately eliminate some concepts as not viable.

    Other factors, like effectiveness and audience adoption, might require you to create a mockup of the concept and test it with your audience in order to determine the value.

    Once you’re estimate the success profile of each concept, you can select a few concepts to develop and measure further. You might launch one or several. Obviously this is a complex decision-making process that requires more attention that I have space for here.

    One person at an international organization had a different approach: “In our business we have many different global use cases, so we will now take your advice and map it against an upcoming scenario.”

  • Does every project need a concept design stage?
    No. (I’ll say more about this when I have time.)
  • Does it make to do concept design at different points during product design and development? My projects follow a more agile, ongoing development cycle; does it make sense to inject concept design at different points during that cycle?
  • How many concepts should I create?
  • Are concepts like prototypes?
    No. A concept communicates what a product or service could be, whereas a prototype tests how a product or service would actually function and/or appear.
  • What are different ways to express the concepts?
    We can express a concept in many ways: as an image of an interface, an animation of an interface, a storyboard of how customers would use it, a video scenario, and so on. In choosing a medium, we typically take into account what we’re communicating, who we’re communicating to, how much time and money we have, and what expertise we can access.
  • Should I show the concepts to clients?
  • Should I publish my concepts publicly?
  • Won’t this take a lot of time out of my project?
  • Won’t it cost more money to create concepts?
  • Are there benefits for my project manager?
    Definitely. Concepts reduce risk by ensuring we explore the space of possible designs for the best solution. Imagine reaching the end of the project and the client asks, “Why didn’t you design it this other way?” and you don’t have a good answer.

    Cindy Blue, a designer in Washington D.C., says, “For me, this has been the single most useful reason for having a conceptual design. I love using it to facilitate communication early in the project, but I’ve also used them later in the project when a new stakeholder needs to be brought up to speed on how we got to where we are and the key decision points along the way. They are educational, and can be presented in a way that is almost so obvious that it is difficult to fundamentally disagree with. Or, even if someone still does fundamentally disagree with an approach, you have a framework for that discussion.“

  • Can creating concepts help my position in my company?
    Maybe. One example comes from Alejo Jumat, a user experience lead at Nokia, who says, “Our group at work has become pretty good at creating concepts, so much so that other departments hear about how fast we can arrive at a compelling solution and come to us to help them.“
  • Are there exercises we can do to build our concept design skills?
  • Can we use these tools at a whiteboard?
  • Can you concept design tools also be used to generate new business strategies or business models?
    Yes. First, to hear the benefits of developing multiple models, see this video from the Managing as Designing event.
  • Where Can I Go For More Information?

One Response to “Concept Design”

  1. Smart Experience » Blog Archive » Is the First Idea the Worst? Says:
    December 30th, 2008 at 4:01 pm

    [...] never thought to analyze when the most useful ideas appear. As a contribution to our thinking about concept design, it’s more support for robust idea [...]

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