HUMAN CENTERED DESIGN | DEFINE

Insights & Opportunities

30 Min

The most challenging part of sense-making is drawing insights from one's research. Insights & Opportunities is one way for teams to translate information into actionable insights that can be taken forward in the design process.

USE CASES

Translate key takeaways into insights.
Translate insights into opportunities.

LIMITATIONS

Drawing insights is not a matter of using a particular tool — it requires reflection, collaboration, and willingness to iterate.

Beginners Guide to How Might We

UNDERSTANDING THE TOOL

‘Key Takeaways’ are the most important themes, learnings, and findings from the Affinity Mapping exercise.
‘Insights’ are new and fundamental things one has understood about a problem or opportunity, and potential solutions. These could be things about users, context, system, service, etc.
‘Opportunities’ are potential ways to approach solutions. They can be framed as “How Might We?” statements.

STEP BY STEP

Select takeaways: Refer back to key themes and learnings (the takeaways) from Affinity Mapping or any other exercise done by the team for the first level of synthesis. Select the most important takeaways.
Reflect on takeaways: Once the takeaways have been selected, map them on the left most column. Then, for individual takeaways and for groups of takeaways, discuss what they mean for the design process.
Write down insights: As individuals first, and then as a team, write down insights based on the discussion. Insights are new and/or fundamental things one has understood, about the problem and potential solutions.
Expand into opportunities: To ease the transition into problem solving, frame some early opportunities as How Might We statements (see Design Challenge tool).

HOW TO FOR FACILITATORS

At the start: Have everyone spend time discussing the key themes and learnings that came out of Affinity Mapping.
During the exercise: Help teams translate their findings and takeaways into insights first. Help them reframe the insights into opportunities.
At the close: Have participants discuss insights and opportunities.

FACILITATORS QUESTION BANK

What were the key themes and learnings emerging from the Affinity Mapping exercise?
How would you know something is an insight? Are your insights reflecting fresh and fundamental thinking?
Do you want to look at insights first as individuals, and then as a group?
What opportunities emerge from the key takeaways and insights?
How can we translate opportunities into How Might We statements?

The FinLab Toolkit