HUMAN CENTERED DESIGN | IDEATION

Concept Prioritisation

15 Min

The Concept Prioritisation tool helps teams prioritise the ideas they have come up with during brainstorming sessions. While a team may choose to simply vote on ideas and choose those with the highest votes, the tool here helps them consider various factors before a final choice is made.

USE CASES

Evaluate ideas using diverse and logical criteria.
Build consensus on ideas to take forward into prototyping

LIMITATIONS

Going through a detailed prioritisation exercise can be a cumbersome and exhausting experience. An alternative to using an extensive grid, is using a simpler 2x2 grid or getting teams to vote on favourite ideas.

UNDERSTANDING THE TOOL

On the left hand side, list the different criteria that are to be used for prioritisation. Teams should ideally use a mix of pre-defined criteria, and custom or self defined criteria. The ideas that have to be evaluated need to be mapped on the columns.
‘It Solves for the Problem or Opportunity’ is the criteria that focuses on how well an idea addresses the core problem or opportunity.
‘It Reflects the Insights and Learnings’ is the criteria that focuses on how rooted an idea is in the insights and learnings that have emerged from research.
‘Users will Find it Desirable’ is the criteria that focuses on whether the idea is something that will be welcomed by users.
‘The Team is Excited about it’ is the criteria that focuses on whether the idea is something the team is passionate about building.
‘Other criteria’ are those criteria that the team can specify themselves; costs involved, skills available, technology available, etc.. These could be some criteria to look into.
Scores under each of the criteria could be given individually (and then averaged or summed) or by the team as a whole. Allocation of weights to the criteria (for example to 50% to desirability, 20% to excitement, 30% to solves the problem) is a decision left to the team.

STEP BY STEP

Define the criteria: Define the final set of criteria to evaluate ideas on — predefined or custom.
Down-select ideas: As a team, choose a set of ideas from all the different brainstorming activities the team may have done. Bring similar ideas together as one single idea.
Score ideas: Assign scores (1-5 or Low, Medium, High) to each idea, individually or as a group. You may choose to assign different weights to the criteria, this makes the exercise even more robust.
Rank and review the ideas: Tally the scores, and see which ideas rise to the top. Discuss top ideas with the team.

HOW TO FOR FACILITATORS

At the start: Make sure participants have reviewed the tool. Help them choose a bunch of ideas from other brainstorming activities to bring into the prioritisation exercise.
During the exercise: Help teams score the ideas as they move across criteria.
At the close: Discuss the top ideas identified by each team.

FACILITATORS QUESTION BANK

Can we go through all the previous brainstorming we have done, and choose the best ideas to bring into this prioritisation exercise? What are the top 10-12 ideas that we want to prioritise amongst?
Do the pre-defined criteria in the first column work for you? Do you want to add more?
Do you want to assign any weights to the criteria?
Which for your team, is the most important criteria? Do the weights reflect this?
How do you want to score the ideas? Are you using points or some sort of a scale (low-medium-high)?
Do you want to vote individually first, and then see what the sums/averages are? Or, do you want to assign scores as a group from the start?
Do we agree with the prioritisation? Have the best ideas made it to the top?
If you are not happy with your prioritisation, do you want to perhaps relook at the weights you may have assigned to the criteria?

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