Objective

For an organization to think outside the box, sometimes it needs to be physically outside the box to get results. So they meet in crappy convention rooms with bad coffee, bad furniture and bad lighting. And that’s only touching the surface on what is bad. Landing Gear would provide a dedicated inspirational space, a trained facilitator, the right ideation process to help complete the client’s work product (e.g. a plan, a specification, a paper prototype etc.) and let innovative minds explode out the box.

Overview

After putting on a workshop with an international communications firm, problems with the Landing Gear concept began to surface. How would the client justify the cost when a one day session simply results in sheets chart paper reeking of black marker or covered in sticky notes? Something tangible has to come out of this expense. I began looking at and creating different kinds of work products that could come out of these sessions that would be actionable such as mock ups, low fidelity prototypes, and concept documents... work product that does not require a tremendous amount of training.

What effect on the outcome in terms of how participants are chosen to be in the ideation process? How are these decisions and what criteria is being used to select participants? After all, some people are more predisposed to “spitballing” new ideas and some prefer to analyze after the ideas arrive. Some people prefer just to observe, go home, think about it and come back later with their thoughts. Which leads to the next point. How do we create an environment where non-verbal voices are not traditionally drowned out by highly verbal ones?

To overcome a lot of these challenges, I set aside the brick and mortar version and began studying a Web-based version which I called StormQuick. I wrote the business plan and design specification for a fully fledged product as well as a specification for a prototype to demonstrate the key use cases (i.e. Minimal Viable Product). As mobile technologies were emerging, the Web-based product was sidelined for a more mobile device framework called SAMURAI which I started working on several years later.