51 Top Insight and Co-Creation Techniques for Innovation from IDEO

IDEO’s much-respected Method Cards, outlining 50 top insight and co-creation techniques for innovation, is available as a free downloadable iOS app. The brilliant deck of 51 cards is also available from Amazon.

Built on the proven LEARN-LOOK-ASK-TRY framework for developing concepts, IDEO’s gift to the world is a core resource for brands and their agencies looking to deliver high performance research and co-creation workshops.

We’ve highlighted our favourite tools for innovating for consumer products…

LEARN: Collecting and analysing information to identify patterns and insights

• Activity Analysis, Affinity Diagrams, Anthropometric Analysis, Character Profiles, Cognitive Task Analysis, Competitive Product Survey, Cross-Cultural Comparisons, Error Analysis, Flow Analysis, Historical Analysis, Long-Range Forecasts, Secondary Research

LOOK: Observing people to discover what they do rather than what they say

• A Day in the Life, Behavioral Archaeology, Behavioral Mapping, Fly on the Wall, Guided Tours, Personal Inventory, Rapid Ethnography, Shadowing, Social Network Mapping, Still-Photo Survey, Time-Lapse Video,

ASK: Enlisting people’s participation to elicit information relevant to the project

• Camera Journal, Card Sort, Cognitive Maps, Collage, Conceptual Landscape, Cultural Probes, Draw the Experience, Extreme User Interviews, Five Whys?, Foreign Correspondents, Narration, Surveys & Questionnaires, Unfocus Group, Word-Concept Associations

TRY: Creating simulations to help empathise with people and evaluate proposed innovations

• Behavior Sampling, Be Your Customer, Bodystorming, Empathy Tools, Experience Prototype, Informance, Paper Prototyping, Predict Next Year’s Headlines, Quick-and-Dirty Prototyping, Role-Playing, Scale Modeling, Scenarios, Scenario Testing, Try It Yourself