OFFF 2011 Presentation
Conceptor
The brief
Because we did the website for OFFF 2011, we were invited to speak there as well.
The idea
We wanted to give people a glimpse of the process we did to come up with the ideas we had for the website.
The concept
Since the whole process was very theoretical to explain, we made some movies expressing the atmosphere and feeling of our teamwork so that the presentation would become a bit more entertaining.
The result
We got many many great reactions through Twitter. Standing on the main stage of OFFF 2011 was a blessing.
Goals & Expectations
Goals and expectations help you start your project on the right foot. Goals define what you want to reach with the project: beautiful designs, well-thought-out functionalities, lots of visits... Expectations are more personal: they are what you expect from yourself, your team, your company, and your client. Expectations define the rules: They set the timing for your project, the guidelines when working together, the course of the project, etc. What you end up with in the end is a set of rules for creativity. Rules that can help you be more creative and come up with better ideas.
Research
Research is one of the most important steps in the process. Not only will it motivate you to create something awesome, it will also get your team on the same page as well. We divided the different research topics among the members of the team, each looking into the subject he or she knew the most about. After a day of research, we each presented our results and subsequently discussed the different ideas that bubbled up. The goal of our research? Finding insights, which happens to be our next step!
Research Part 2
Insights are definitions, statements, or rules you find through research. They can be trends, new technologies, or economic influences, to name but a few. The goal is to collect them all on a map, and find new opportunities on which you can start building ideas. To facilitate finding ideas that match and connect with these insights, you convert the insights you distilled from your research to focus questions, which is our next step.
Insights and statistics
As part of our research for OFFF, we put together a questionnaire. Thanks to Hector, the organizer of the event, we were able to contact approximately 1000 people through a mailing list. More than 100 subscribers reacted, which is not much, but enough to get some nice statistics out of it.
Interviews
Our last question on the questionnaire asked participants if they had an (ANY) idea they wanted to share with us. This incited some very nice reactions, which we bundled in this movie.
How might we?
For every insight we found in the previous step, we created a focus question. This question always started with HMW: ‘How might we...’ Three simple words that made each question so open that it instantly sparked the brain and pushed it to generate ideas. As a rule, focus questions should be very simple questions that everyone can understand. In fact, ideally, focus questions should even be able to trigger ideas in the head of someone who is totally new to the project.
Brainstorming
Brainstorming is the most fun and exciting part of the whole process. All you need is a big white sheet of paper, a few thick black markers, a lot of post-it notes, and an (over)dose of energy. Step one is to write the focus questions you came up with in the previous step down on your big white piece of paper. Then you start throwing ideas around. This is something you should all do together. Write everything on a post-it note, or better yet, draw it. Share your ideas with your team, and brainstorm in small spells of 5 to 10 minutes.
Synthesis
Synthesis is the hardest part of the whole process. This is when you start filtering the ideas and select those ideas that have a lot of potential, and that you think can become something bigger. Not easy to do, since you have to remain objective and it’s not always easy to let go of your brain babies. Once the triage is out of the way you start categorizing the remaining ideas and looking for connections between the different ideas you've kept. That isn't easy either: categories will change, and some connections may be very (too) obvious while others require more work.
Progressive ideas
During our brainstorm sessions for OFFF we came up with an enormous amount of ideas, most of which we threw out during the synthesis stages. Nevertheless, we kept some of them in our little black box. Why? Because some of these ideas we still like very much! We just thought they were perhaps a bit too... progressive—which is why we are proud to introduce to you some of the ideas we hope to use in one of the next OFFF websites!
Prototyping
Once you’ve harvested your final ideas you can start prototyping. Prototypes are very simple outlines of the ideas in front of you. They can be quick sketches, or simple wireframes. You generally use them to get a better idea of the actual work to be done and as inspiration for the final wireframes. For OFFF we worked in two teams, each exploring the same idea at the same time. We then presented our version of the idea to each other. And because we had two versions of the same idea, we could take the best aspects from both, and use them in the final wireframes.
Please enable Javascript and Flash to view our presentation or view it here.
Final presentation
This is the final presentation we gave at OFFF.
Download the presentationProject info
- Client:
- OFFF
- Company:
- Design is Dead
- Date:
- June 2011
Tools used
Fish wire, UrbanTerror, lipstick, tons of post it notes, ketchup, deodorant, ...
Credits
- Motion graphics:
- Wes Nijssen
- Actors:
- Isabel Jablonski, Wes Nijssen, Laura Muls, Edith Ronse, Daniël Goyvaerts, ...
- Most of the music:
- DJ Klitzkov!
