Make Something

Putting your ideas into physical form can help solidify your ideas. It can also bring a different side of your creativity to the fore. Building models of various kinds can spark new ideas and can challenge you to clarify your own thinking. The objective is not to assemble an artistic masterpiece but to begin the process of transforming something vague into a more tangible idea.

Build a Craft Model

Sometimes it helps to make your ideas tangible. Building something sometimes helps you envision a product as people will actually encounter it. The model you create can be more impressionistic than realistic. If you’re modeling a newsletter, you might glue some popsicle sticks to a piece of cardboard to simulate the text and glue on some photos from a magazine to simulate the vibrant imagery you’re envisioning.

Or maybe you’re developing an iOS app for recording audio memories. You could craft a smartphone out of aluminum foil and connect it to an ear made of pipe cleaners to illustrate the value of the listening and recording components of the app. Playing with physical materials, shapes, colors, and textures can sometimes unlock creative ideas. And it can be a fun exercise to work on with a friend or colleague as a way to open up a discussion about the product or service you’re developing.

End Result: After you’ve had a bit of arty fun kindergarten style, you’ve got a little physical model that can serve as a conversation starter. And you may have a new thought or two about what aspects lie at the core of the experience you hope people will have with your product.

Script a Role Play

People other than you will ultimately use your product or service. What will they be doing or saying when they decide to use it? What will they tell other people about it? What aspects of it do you expect they might encounter and explore first? To develop some guesses or hunches about these and related questions about users’ eventual experiences with your product/service, you can draft a script outlining what they’ll do and say. Here’s how to do that:

Lay Out the Context: Start with an opening stage direction about the scene. Where does this take place, and who is the person on stage? This is a first encounter kind of scene, so the user is actually doing something else when s/he hears about, reads about, or otherwise learns about your product or service. Maybe they get an email or text or Facebook message from a friend. Or maybe they do a Google search and land upon your service. Or maybe they are out somewhere and someone mentions it. Lay out the context of the scene, where it takes place, what time of day, and provide a sentence or two of background on this user. Then include any dialogue or stage direction that explains what is going on in the scene.

Scene Two—The Use Case: In this scene, the user is actually using the product/service. S/he’s trying to accomplish something or enjoying whatever your product or service provides. Maybe she’s reading something, learning about something, commenting, completing a task, or otherwise engaging. Give the viewer a sense of what the use experience is like. Maybe the user is talking to herself about what she’s doing so that the listener is clear on what’s going on.

Scene Three—Sharing: Having had a positive experience with the product/service, the user is now sharing about it with a friend, family member, colleague or acquaintance. Maybe she’s writing an email, Facebook post or talking about it on the phone. What does she say about the product or service? Keep in mind that this isn’t an ad, so the idea isn’t to put promotional language in someone’s mouth. It’s to think practically about how someone might talk about the product or service you’re envisioning. Thinking about what they might say in talking about it may help you as you consider product characteristics and develop your list of product requirements. It will also help point you to language to use in introducing or marketing your product to users.

End Result: A script that allows you — or someone you’re working with — to bring to life your assumptions, expectations and/or hopes for the way people will discover, interact with, and spread the word about your product service.

Make a Pinterest Inspiration Board

This is an exercise to draw out analogous empathy. Select 10 to 15 pins that illustrate an element from other problems or solutions that are related to your own in some way. For example, if you’re focused on a newsletter aimed at professional scientists, you might pin various other kinds of newsletters. One pin might emphasize an appealing layout approach, while another has a clever way of encouraging people to share the newsletter with colleagues. Still another might have a smart advertisement or a clear call-to-action Tweet. All of these can be useful fodder later on when you’re thinking through various aspects of the solution you’re developing.

End Result: A board that you can show others, update periodically, and return to yourself when seeking inspiration or ideas for the solution you’re building.

Draft an Ad

If you were composing an advertisement for your product, what would be its core message? Here’s your opportunity to draft that ad, even if your product doesn’t yet exist. Especially if the product doesn’t yet exist, because thinking backward from how you’ll pitch the final product to users is a valuable way to focus your creative energies on the features that are most crucial. You might want to create two separate ads if you have two or more distinct sets of customers. For example, if you’re creating an ad-supported consumer publication, you might create one ad to lure in readers and a separate one to appeal to advertisers.

Don’t worry about making the ad look professional. What’s important is developing a concept that helps convey the value you’re offering clearly and concisely. People might only spend a few seconds glancing at an ad, whether it’s in print or digital, so each word, image or sound you choose is crucial.

Start by thinking about words that convey the feeling you want people to have when they hear about, see or use your product. These might be words like simple, clear, or fun, or words like smart, fast or comprehensive. Or they might be more specific feelings like proud, amused, inspired, surprised, or curious. Once you’ve developed that list of words, think about what message you want people to take away from the ad. Try to express it in a single sentence.

Once you’ve selected a few words and a takeaway message, start sketching. If it helps, pick up a magazine and refer to a few print ads for reference. Don’t worry if your drawing skills do full justice to the concept you have in mind. In showing the ad to a colleague or friend you can walk them through it, so they’ll get the idea regardless of how lifelike your characters are or how realistically you’ve drawn objects or places. If you prefer, you can create the ad collage-style, assembling cut-outs rather than drawing it fully yourself.

Keep in mind that even though your product may have multiple points of value, a single ad should have a clear focus on a single primary takeaway. Don’t try to pack too much into the ad or the message might end up being confusing or cluttered.

Example: Imagine founder Noah Rosenberg were designing an ad for Narrative.ly, his site featuring longform, high-quality stories. For the feelings he wants to evoke he might choose words like: intrigued, curious, and smart. He might aim to leave people with the following message: Narrative.ly has the kind of illuminating stories that take my mind off the mundane aspects of my work and the frustrating grind of political headlines. Then he might sketch a picture with tense political headlines blaring overhead as someone leans over a laptop, typing. Over on the side sits an appealing, neatly-designed table with a cool glass of water, a calming plant and a tablet loaded up with a Narrative.ly story. A caption reads: Narrative.ly: For an illuminating break from mundanity and madness.

End Result: A simple image that helps convey one or more of the core values you hope to communicate to users. This can be useful as a conversation starter and may lead to further thinking and discussion about how people will perceive the product you’re developing.

The 3-Step Sketch

Describe the interaction you want users to have with your product. There are often three key steps in that process. In this exercise, you draw out on three sequential index cards the primary interactions. One starting step could be someone typing something into a search box, signing up for an email list, or clicking join on a Facebook page. Another could depict someone walking into an in-person event. Or someone sending a text reply to receive more info. These three simple sketches portray three core ways people engage and interact with your product or service. The three index cards — or three portions of a sheet of a paper— should depict three distinct elements of engagement that may be sequential or in some other way related.

End Result: A view of key elements of engagement. This can serve as a springboard for considering how best to motivate people to move toward the action depicted. What moments preceding that step can you help shape? These visuals can remind you of the actions you’re hoping to promote.

Build a Mockup

Before you’re ready to build an actual site or app, create a prototype using slides or images. With a simple tool like Keynotopia or the Marvel App you can create a series of interactive screens that mimic a living site. This allows you to simulate the experience of engaging with the product you’re developing without actually devoting tech resources to enabling interactivity.

The benefit of doing it in this way is that you can experiment with approaches and interactions simply and easily just by creating or editing slides, rather than by implementing actual computer code. With Keynotopia, it’s as easy as linking PowerPoint or Keynote slides together with hotspots, which are portions of a slide that are highlighted to serve as links to other slides. By linking slides together, you can create the appearance that something on a slide is an active link leading to another Web page, when it’s actually just linking to another slide. If you present the slide deck on a tablet or phone, it looks and feels like a living app.

End Result: A prototype of an app or a site that is clickable and simulates interactivity. It’s a good way to take a baby step forward toward envisioning how people might interact with your product.

Make a 30-Second Audio Story

Use your voice to concisely convey the value of your new product. Think of this as an informal elevator pitch, or what you would say to someone on an elevator if they asked you about your venture. Here’s a template for your 30-second audio piece. Start with an attention grabber — a hook to draw in people’s attention and make them care. Then give them a quick summary of the value proposition. Finally, add a why sentence explaining why you’re doing this, or why you expect it to have impact. If you have a call to action, you can include that at the end.

Creating the audio spot challenges you to put your value into simple, authentic words and sentences. Avoid using jargon or formal language. Practice using clear, natural language. Talk as if you were speaking to an intelligent colleague, friend or relative. Write out your script as a few sentences and practice reading it a few times to determine where best to pause for emphasis and which words to accentuate. If you’re working with a partner, you can experiment with alternating your voices by sentence. Or try recording two versions and ask an objective third-party to choose one for you to share.

Fictional Example: “There are millions of new dads in China who are excited about fatherhood but have no idea what to expect. That’s why we’re launching, Dadster, a Chinese-language newsletter and WeChat account to give new dads great tips and encouragement from fellow dads and moms. We think little bits of info can have a big impact on a major transitional moment in dads’ lives. To find out, more follow Dadster on WeChat.”

End Result: Once you have a 30-second audio file, you can share it with friends or colleagues for quick feedback. Or you can post it on social channels if you’re ready to get input from a broader circle.

Make a 30-Second Video Story

If you’ve never made a video, start by creating a simple slideshow with a series of about six to eight images. These can be photos with large caption text, or they can be actual slides created using Keynote or Powerpoint or other slide creation software. Free online design tools and templates at Canva.com, Fotor.com or Adobe Spark Post offer an alternative way to create these professional-looking images simply and quickly.

These slides should add up to a story about your product and its value. Each one can each convey something about your product. Avoid using more than 12 words on each slide, because people won’t be able to read more as the video progresses quickly. For imagery, make sure you use your own best photos or great public images available for anyone to use with a Creative Commons license.

That license means you don’t have to request or pay for permission to use the images—the creators have already publicly shared the images with open permissions. Try free image repositories like unsplash.com or pexels.com. Or find other sources at search.creativecommons.org, which is also a great source for free music or other material you might want to use in your video.

Once you have created your slides, you can assemble them using a simple video editing tool like iMovie or Adobe Spark Video. To make things even simpler, you can use the free Adobe Spark Video to create the entire video, start to finish. Here’s an example of a simple pitch video created with Spark Video. Here’s a first-person approach, focusing on a creator.

End Result: You’ll have a brief video to share on social media or to show to friends, family and trusted colleagues for their reactions and impressions. The key is not to focus on whether they like the video, but rather on what impressions they have about it, what questions it prompts, what they notice about it, what makes them laugh or smile, or what confuses them. Those are the things that you’ll be able to build on.

Booklet

To sum up the idea behind what you’re developing and its potential value to users, create a visually-driven short booklet four to eight pages in length. There should be minimal text so people can scan through the booklet easily and quickly. The visuals should be engaging and high-quality. Ideally, at least some of the images should include human faces, which tend to provide strong connection points for viewers. If you have simple-to-understand diagrams, charts or other facts, figures or stats that explain the context for your product or its value, include those as well.

Using the series of images, slides or graphics you’ve assembled, create a small booklet to showcase your product. If you’ve created a slide presentation, you can pull out individual slides as components of your booklet. If you’re starting from scratch, you can create a series of one-page images with text on them with slide creation software like Keynote, Powerpoint or Google Slides. Or create a series of pages made up of images and text using simple design tools like Canva.com, Fotor.com or Adobe Spark Post. Once you have a series of pages ready, you can print them as a simple stapled booklet, or use a printer’s booklet function to create a folded mini-pamphlet.

End Result: The booklet can serve as a useful, cheap conversation starter. Use it to help explain to people what you’re working on and why. And you can use it to spread the word about your product.

Product Box

Imagine you were selling your product the way cereal boxes are sold, either at a retail outlet or at a fair or trade show. Start with an empty cereal box or a plain white box. If necessary, tape or glue plain paper over the box so you have a blank surface to work with. Use whatever supplies you like, such as crayons, markers, and pens, glitter glue, and stickers. Spend 30-45 minutes designing and decorating the box. Use the cereal box approach for inspiration, if you’d like. Cheerios, Rice Krispies and other popular brands include not just the name of the product and the manufacturer but also nutritional data, and symbols and characters that bring the brand to life. Some also use slogans or promotional offers to tempt potential purchasers. The idea behind this exercise is to adopt a product mindset and focus on what elements, words, phrases, images will help you distinguish what you’re developing from what’s already in the marketplace.

End Result: A colorful box that acts as a physical embodiment of your product. Use it as a conversation starter or ask friends or colleagues to suggest improvements or features that might make the product more compelling.

Make it Live

Before you launch a finished product you may be ready for input. When you want to get quick reactions to what you’re creating, make something that people can interact with. You don’t have to spend much time, effort or money to create a simple prototype. The key thing is to enable people to do something with what you’ve made and then to explore their behavior and feedback.

Wizard of Oz

This approach is named after the Wizard of Oz because just like L. Frank Baum’s Wizard, you’ll be substituting simple human effort for a giant powerful resource that people might imagine is behind your product. If your service includes personalization — either through an algorithm or otherwise, test out the user experience early on by providing the service manually.

For example, if you’re developing a news curation service that provides selected articles to people based on a complex set of parameters, start out by serving a few pilot customers manually. Gather and select the material one by one, even before you’ve begun developing the algorithm. If you’re developing a service that automatically drafts content summaries for businesses, write a few pilot summaries by hand.

The process of creating materials by hand has multiple benefits. First, it allows you to get a sense for how the assembly process works and what the requirements are for a quality product. Second, it allows you to test customer reactions and to see what product characteristics are most important. Are the pilot customers mainly concerned about the speed of delivery, or comprehensiveness of the content, or the length of the material, or the style, or the formatting, or what else are they commenting on or asking about?

End Result: A few deliveries of your product or service will yield initial reactions or feedback. You can use that input to make adjustments.

Landing Page

Creating a site used to be costly, complex and time-consuming. Now you can have one up in 30 minutes for free without knowing any code. Whether you have a physical product or a digital one, an app or a newsletter, or any other form of product or service, you’ll need a site. This landing page can be the first version of that online presence. It might be something as simple as a place for people to sign up for more info, or it might actually contain your mission statement or manifesto. Some landing pages offer background information about the company and its product, while others simply direct you to other platforms or app stores, where you can download, sign up, buy or otherwise interact.

For the purposes of a quick launch, it’s best to start with a simple, free or low-cost service that allows you to post a page quickly using an existing template that you can adapt for your needs. Services such as Instapage, KickOffLabs, LaunchRock and others provide an easy way to get a page ready in less than 30 minutes. Select a template, replace its text and images and you’re ready to go. Most services let you plug in your own URL if you have one, or use a temporary URL like Instapage.com/yoursite if you prefer to start that way. Here’s a list of other landing page options, and here’s a showcase of more than 300 examples of landing pages in more than 50 categories.

End Result: Once you have a landing page link to share, you can gather reactions and input and track questions people ask. You’ll use that info as you iterate and improve.