Methods for Innovating

You’ve just finished reading about how to create positive surprises in the sense of how and where to consider creating features in your product. That’s the easy problem to solve, actually. The real question is this: How do you discover and decide which specific surprises to implement? Next we will look at several methods by which to answer that question.

Creating Positive Surprises and Wows for Core Tasks

To present positive surprises and wows that have a big impact, you want to place them where most of your users will see or experience them. Placing a wow for a function that is rarely used by any of your users will not give any impact. Thus, center your efforts around the core tasks of your product.

You can, for example, place each of your core tasks in the center of a diagram, and then place applications, technologies, user needs, pain points, and so on around it. You may not need a full list of applications and technologies around the core task; you can instead focus on areas where you already have an idea of where positive surprises or wows can be hidden. You may also want to list only user needs that are relevant to surprises and wows.

Figure 11-7 shows how such a list could look for a specific piece of video conversion software, where a core task has been identified around converting and transferring movies to mobile devices. In this figure I have placed user needs, technologies, pain points, and applications around this specific core task.

Figure 11-7. Core task placed in the middle of the diagram for the video conversion software example

Figure 11-8 shows how you can then invite a group of people with different expertise and ideally some lead users to a session to innovate for your specific product (in this example, a video conversion software package).

Figure 11-8. Example of results from innovating wow and positive surprises around the core task

Creating Positive Surprises and Wows for the First Impression

The first impression for many products, such as web pages and some types of software, is often where you will either get and keep a new customer, or lose the customer and never see them again. For all types of products, it is important to create positive surprises and wows around the first impressions.

Follow the method in Chapter 10 for innovating around first impressions. That method will help you place positive surprises and wows into the first impressions of your product. The first impression of your product is also a place to be sure not to create pain points, so—as mentioned before—be very observant about potential wows and surprises created around the first impression.