The team developed a process to uncover the "recipe for awesome" by analyzing great products and experiences. They brainstormed examples, identified common reasons for awesomeness, and distilled these into 10 key "ingredients." Each member then explored awesomeness using unique methods like interviews and social media analysis. They reconvened to validate ingredients and organize their thinking before presenting their findings.
2. Discover the recipe for awesome by analyzing great products,
services and experiences and distilling out the ingredients that fuel
their success. Using these ingredients, Intuit will be able to
strategically inject awesomeness into their product ecosystem and
company culture as a whole.
our mission:
3. The process outlined in this deck shows how our
team uncovered the recipe for awesome by:
• Defining a process strategy
• Going broad on ideas, then going narrow
• Exploring and inventing new methods for
generating ideas and visualizing results
• Presenting our strong point of view in a
compelling, memorable way
• Working as a group with complimentary creative
problem solving styles and
how we found awesome
4. Starting with our first group meeting, our team met
to dissect and “fall in love with” the problem of
exposing awesomeness.
Through participatory sketching, we collaborated
on a process that involved brainstorming products,
services and experiences that we considered
awesome.
From there, we planned to dig deep on each item
and discuss why we thought it was so great. We
would then look for affinities in the reasons for
awesomeness and group accordingly.
These trends would eventually become our front-
runners for awesome ingredients.
defining the process
5. Our team soon realized that we would need to go both broader and deeper to truly expose
awesome. We revised our process to include a phase of “individual exploration” where each team
member would explore new awesome products and the reasons behind them using a method of
their choosing. That way, when we reconvened, we would each have a unique perspective to add to
the discussion.
defining the process
6. The first step in our process was to generate as
many ideas as possible, using post its to track and
group our output.
We generated about 100 examples of products,
services and experiences and coded them from the
wall into a document we call the “Awesome
Spreadsheet”.
To gain additional perspective, we also generated a
list of things that are “not awesome” to identify
characteristics that should be avoided, or even
inverted to alleviate pain and create positive traits.
Using the spreadsheet, we recorded the reason for
each item being so awesome, or not awesome,
respectively.
going broad
7. Once we had compiled our lists of awesome and
not awesome, we began our phase of going deep
on understanding the root causes.
This process was to involve product-centered
methods like user interviews about the WHY of
awesomeness behind favorite products.
One specific tool we planned to use was the
empathy map (pictured right) to guide the interview
conversations and get to deep emotional causes of
awesomeness.
From there, we planned place ingredients on the
axes of 2x2 grids and see how many of the products
on our original list ended up in the upper right
quadrant. We would use these products as
examples to present back to intuit.
BUT... our plans were about to change...
going deep: original team method
8. Upon meeting with Armando and Rosanne at Intuit,
we gained some valuable insights that significantly
transformed our process:
• Our exploration should not be product-focused.
Instead, it should center on emotion associated
with awesomeness. Too narrow a focus on
product might miss contextual factors like
anticipation or brand fanaticism.
• We should not feel constrained by established
methods or frameworks. Instead, we should feel
free to develop our own that would be most
suited to the problem.
redirection: meeting with intuit
9. As a result of our conversation with Intuit, our team reshaped our process of going deep. Each team
member would individually explore root causes of awesomeness using a method of their choosing,
but we would focus less on product and be more creative in our methods.
going deep: individual exploration
10. • White boarded how awesome things come to
be so through promotional methods, using
examples like grassroots movements and
extravagant product rollouts.
• Experimented with the Twitter analysis tool
Neoformix, looking for common themes around
use of the word awesome in the collective
Twittersphere.
• Explored the ideas in Stephen Andersons’s
Mental Notes cards as factors that might create
awesome through influence.
ray’s method: flows, twitter analysis, mental notes
11. • Sandra pursued an experimental approach to
interviewing on the hypothesis that movement
and re-enactment would help trigger deep
memory associations. In this first effort, the
hypothesis proved to be true.
• Four participants were given 5 minutes to list
products, experiences, or anything else that
came to mind as truly awesome. The only
limiting criteria was that it be something they
had personally used or experienced.
• Participants re-enacted one of their experiences
or products, narrating as they went. Available
furniture was used to “stage” the scenes, and
fellow participants could be called on to play
specific roles.
• Sandra facilitated by asking clarifying questions,
or prompting if needed. A senior colleague
served as facilitator for Sandra’s own interview.
• The sessions were videotaped, discussed, and
analyzed for awesome ingredients.
sandra’s method: bodystorm interviews
12. • Explored the Facebook timelines of six friends
to identify the reasons why people share. Her
hypothesis being that people are more inclined
to share awesome for very specific reasons.
• Distilled several characteristics that manifested
in sharing patterns, including things like
anticipation, achievement and discovery
• Visualized each characteristic and documented it
with examples in a process flow sketch (pictured
right)
• Interviewed some of the participants to gain
further insight
• The entire document is located in the
supporting documentation folder located at the
end of this deck.
nandita’s method: digital field study, sharing
13. • Awesome Accelerator – Derived from mind
mapping and root cause analysis, the awesome
accelerator (bottom right) starts begins with an
awesome product, then branches to what makes
it awesome. Each reason is then boosted one
order of magnitude (ex. “less expensive”
becomes “free or open source”) and new
products are added that match each amplified
reason
• Cult Brand Exploration – Using ecommerce site
“wish list” functionality, he identified products
that people most aspire to own and brands that
capture “fanatics.” He then used twitter word
clouds to see the terms that are most commonly
associated with each – powerful statements of
emotion.
• Engine of Awesome – A concept detailed in our
presentation that shows how awesome is a
function of many connected factors.
ben’s method: awesome accelerator + cult brands
14. • The individual team members brought back
their research findings and combined their
awesome ingredients into an awesome
distillation spreadsheet.
• The ingredients were then collaboratively
grouped, and prioritized using a loose affiliate
mapping technique. A single representative
term was selected for each concept. The list was
then further narrowed to the 10 most
compelling ingredients.
• The new representative ingredients list was then
mapped against the team’s original brainstorm
list of awesome “Ethos/Pathos/Logos” items to
validate the approach.
• In parallel, antonyms of the awesome
ingredients were mapped to the “not awesome”
list of items.
coming together
15. • The team explored a number of different ways
to represent and structure the 10 ingredients.
• One approach was to explore whether all
awesome ingredients pertained to some
combination of the Self, Time, and Context. A
Venn diagram was used to map the ingredients
to the most appropriate intersection of these
aspects.
• Another approach was the “Engine of
Awesome”, which represents how the
ingredients “live” within a dynamic feedback
system. This approach maps the ingredients to a
particular relationship point between the user,
product and society.
• Last but not least, an awesome modular box
was created to represent in a physical medium
how the awesome ingredients could fit together
in a variety of ways.
organizing thinking
16. The team’s presentation plan underwent a number
of evolutionary steps.
We wanted to be emotive – so we considered video
as a means of communicating our awesome
ingredients. However, we also wanted to be
practical and to spend more time developing a
strong point of view than producing and editing
video.
In addition, we felt the presentation itself should
embody and illustrate our awesome concepts as
much as possible. For example, we decided to use
the simple concept of a closed box for suspense.
We considered what order of presentation would
tell the story of our ingredients the most effectively.
Should we try to overtly connect one to the next?
We decided against this, opting to let each
ingredient stand on its own
presenting findings
17. Each team member was able to use at least some of
the new communication, persuasion, and influence
skills learned in class. For example:
• Sandra (Systematic / Generating &
Conceptualizing) noticed Ben’s effective use of
questions to influence, and focused on
increasing her own range of influence and
persuasion techniques to help organize
meetings and facilitate team decisions.
• Nandita (Generating, Conceptualizing and
Implementing) noticed the team’s coming
together and reasoning, and focused on her
own abductive reasoning skills to influence and
come up with creative solutions.
how we worked as a group (1)
18. • Ray (Conceptualizing/Direct and Spirited)
noticed Nandita’s visual skills to present
information as well as her deep research skills
and worked to build on them through
presentation organization.
• Ben (Optimizer / Systematic) noticed that this
project would require several cycles of
redefinition and adjustment to get the most
insightful results, so he worked hard to suspend
judgment and be open to changes in the team
approach as the project evolved.
how we worked as a group (2)
19. All the process artifacts supporting this documentation deck is located here:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B_qvWweztRptU2xKZ2w4cDk2S0k&usp=sharing
supporting documentation
