Design Angels

The château in the wooded, castle-dotted countryside north of Paris is owned by Cap Gemini. The event is the i7 Summit, calling together experts and influencers in technology, innovation, entrepreneurship, and society ‘on the dawn of open innovation and in the aftermath of the greatest economic rethink since the Great Depression’.

With a 40 year history embedded in innovation, frog attended. Not just to inspire and be inspired, but also as the facilitators of business ideation sessions leveraging our frogTHINK method. The breadth of the topics and diversity of participants meant that these sessions served as a sort of mental yoga, stretching us in unaccustomed ways. Instead of our usual one to two day frogTHINK sessions, these were power burst one-hour sessions - meaning the results were high-level and in need of deep refinement. Yet the discussions were lively and bright minds bounced ideas.

One such session led me into an unusual conversation for a Design Researcher. Over weak coffee and astounding pastries, I found myself discussing Business Angels. It started a thought flow that I’ve been chewing on ever since. If Business Angles are the providers of small funds (< $1 Million) to support entrepreneurs, thus playing a vital role in bridging the gap between a great idea and an idea that is robust and compelling enough to generate the interest of those with the ‘real’ venture capital, what is the equivalent in the design world? What forms that essential bridge between a design idea and the first day of build?

It can be only one thing: Simulations. Bear with me here. On a daily basis frog works with companies striving to bring innovation to life. Arguably the greatest obstacle is getting the necessary decision makers all pointing to the same thing when they say, “Please build that.”

frog’s user-centered approach starts with a rigorous context investigation ranging from analyzing market and technology trends to understanding the company brand strategy to observing and interviewing humans in their natural habitat. This investigation provides fodder for our frogThink sessions. With an understanding of the context and a healthy dose of creativity going in, we reliably generate relevant and innovative ideas.

Great, but now we are only at the start of that metaphorical bridge. Our larger goal is to get that idea to market, meaning we need all those decision makers pointing the same way. Not just thinking they are pointing the same way. You know what I mean if you’ve spent much time in the corporate world. The infamous cartoon of the tree swing lying listlessly on the ground is funny for precisely this reason.

Enter, the simulation. Designers take those idea kernels and bring them to life in a movie or interactive prototype that tells the story from the end-user’s perspective. This simulation demonstrates the target experience giving the decision makers the certainty that they are unequivocally pointing at the same goal. If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is a simulation is worth? Just ask an entrepreneur what a Business Angel is worth.