Is there ever too crazy an idea?
Crazy ideas are often associated with things that are unfeasible or too out-of-this-world, but it doesn’t always have to be the most complex or challenging idea. Tze shares how crazy ideas can just be what is completely unexpected and unconventional that inspire new methods or designs.
Summary
- When an idea is “too crazy”, it can be often perceived to be the most complex or challenging, which doesn’t have to be the case
- “Crazy doesn’t always have to be the most complex, or the most wild possibility out there. Sometimes it’s about how unexpected it is. And it can be unexpectedly simple or unexpectedly unconventional.”
- When culling through crazy ideas, it will depend on the team’s appetite for risk and the eventual fidelity of the idea needed
- “Given the amount of knowledge that we have at this point, how do we make a good enough decision to cull down?”
- Some crazy ideas may not get implemented at the current juncture because it is ahead of its time, so they are parked can may become useful at a later stage
Full Transcript
Crazy doesn’t always have to be the most complex, or the most wild possibility out there. Sometimes it’s about how unexpected it is. And it can be unexpectedly simple or unexpectedly unconventional.
DESIREE
In these experimentations, and even in iterating or in ideating, the crazier things tend to be fresher right, and bring kind of this new perspective or new applications in different fields? Have there ever been any experiments that you’ve done, or you’ve observed in the team, that has been so-called too crazy or too difficult to bring back into something feasible or viable?
TZE
I think, so to backtrack a bit right. When you say crazy, sometimes the team picks up different things.
Crazy might not be most technically challenging. Crazy might be, wow, this is such a cheap way to do this, it’s so interesting.
And you know, like a project that’s ongoing right now. We’re looking at how do we get tactile interaction, and we’re looking at mechanical means to do that. And by chance, we’re playing with magnets, and then the magnets gave us a really kind of interesting push-pull interaction from the way that they were arrayed. So for the team, it’s like, wow, this is really interesting, because—well, not that it cost nothing, but it was such a simple device to build. It didn’t fulfil the entire experience that we were looking for, but it gave us maybe 60-70% of what we wanted. And that became like, whoa, this is really cheap to do and we can do it really fast. So sometimes, depending on the team working, crazy might be a different element. Like that became crazy, because it’s like crazy low cost, crazy easy to do. So I think that’s one part of it, right?
Crazy, doesn’t always have to be the most complex, or the most wild possibility out there. Sometimes it’s about how unexpected it is. And it can be unexpectedly simple or unexpectedly unconventional to do.
So on to kind of like the crazy stuff which never gets implemented. I think those happen, I think quite naturally so. And it’s more so, I think it’s more about the selection process, or the decision making process at saying—because when we generate experiments, it’s never singular, right? It’s usually a multiple. And it’s about, hey, given the amount of knowledge that we have at this point, how do we make a good enough decision to cull down to stuff that…
So depending on the team, and depending on the team’s appetite for risk, sometimes we cull more conservatively, sometimes we take some bets.
And it’s always about, I think like we mentioned earlier, about progressively increasing the fidelity. So you know, from an idea that, hey, this is kind of wild, let’s build it, let’s test it, and then we see what happens. At some point you say, you know, to get to something really useful, it’s going to take too much effort, and then we stop the experiment there.
Yeah, there’re cases where, you know, we go all the way and then we realise that, hey, this idea is ahead of this time, its time, or it might not be appropriate for the market. Then it’s kind of, you just have to concede and say, hey, you know what, let’s park it. There’s information that we will learn for it. Maybe it’ll be useful in a later stage.
THE STUCK IN DESIGN TEAM
Desiree Lim, Kevin Yeo, Matthew Wong