Strange as it may be, people naturally unite behind intangible ideas and abstract concepts. We see it in every aspect of life, from politics to science. People want to believe in something: the more passionate their belief, the more enthusiastic their support.
Why? Because ideas are sexy and inspirational. Accenture's recent advertising campaign about 'your idea …' is powerful because everyone knows ideas are important. More than that, everyone wants to have their own ideas. In reality, the strongest ideas are those that can be owned by many people.
Ideas drive successful projects, and never more so than in redesign. Simple, powerful ideas help people understand, and unite behind, future objectives. They give everyone shared ownership of the problem and common ground to measure their own contribution against.
Good ideas can come from anywhere, from anyone at any time. Often they are overlooked or ignored because they are never heard by the right people.
In redesign projects, it is essential to listen to as many people with experience of your existing site, marketplace or customers as possible: one of them might just have the killer idea for the next generation in their mind, and may not even know it.
Developing an effective redesign strategy depends on learning lessons and coming up with good ideas: the ideas that will move the existing site on to bigger and better things. They can be powerful, all-encompassing positioning concepts, or tiny, detail-driven ideas. It doesn't matter: all ideas are valuable.
Take Amazon. The big idea has always been 'the world's biggest, most convenient (book)store'. It was the biggest bookstore on day one, and it's a powerful, exciting idea. But smaller ideas, like 'one click ordering™', added in as part of ongoing redesign projects, make an enormous difference to its success.
The tricky part of course is creating the ideas, and gathering those that people already have. There are a wide range of techniques for brainstorming and developing ideas, but more often than not, the trick is just to listen to what people have to say. Ideas come from stimulus: the more input we get, the more ideas we are likely to generate. And that's why some of the best ideas come, often unknowingly, from the people who are at the coalface – staff and customers who are actively involved in your site on a regular basis.
We would happily swap a thousand research reports for one insightful 'if it only did this…'. A major part of our role on any project is the generation and management of ideas: our own and other people's. Devising an effective future strategy demands ideas and it is essential to use every technique available to us to generate them.
It is essential to invest time in ideas, to undertake activities throughout a redesign project that turn experience and insight into practical strategies and design concepts.
If you think this article will be of use to someone else, fill in their details below and we will email a link to them.
Each time we create a new Viewpoint article, we can notify you by email.