Why We Will Challenge Your Product Ideas for Success

It’s 11 PM, and you’re just about to fall asleep when suddenly – Eureka! – a brilliant idea pops-up in your mind, and you rush to the notebook you keep on your nightstand. It’s the idea of the century, and you can’t afford to let it slip away or, worse, end up on someone else’s nightstand.
However, before you dive into bringing that idea to life, we invite you put your creative mind on pause just for a little while. It’s easy to be captivated by your initial idea (and who knows, maybe it’s the right one!), but there’s no guarantee that it aligns with the market or users’ needs.

Our team is here to help you take a step back, encouraging you to ask the right questions that will enhance your initial idea and guide you towards success.

What Defines an Individual with a Creative Mind?

There are numerous ways to identify someone with a creative mind. They might keep a notebook on their nightstand, install a whiteboard in their shower (no judgement), scribble ideas on their nephews’ school reports, or even borrow their child’s toy to share how its mechanism works with colleagues.

At CLEIO, we embrace this way of life. As professionals driven by creativity, we’re constantly on the lookout for innovative solutions to meet your users’ needs. While not all of us have a whiteboard in the shower, our expertise gives us a flexible and adaptable perspective when proposing solutions.

How to Ensure Your Innovative Idea Is the Best?

We specialize in not falling in love with our ideas… or yours! Although it can be difficult to let go of the adrenaline rush that makes us fall in love with an idea, it’s essential to do so if the resulting innovative product is to be a commercial success.

Challenging Your Initial Idea

How often in life do we encounter an innovative product and question its relevance or design? In such instances, a series of thoughts may cross our minds:

“It’s ridiculous, it’s useless”, “I don’t understand why I would need that”, “It’s too complicated for anything”, “I don’t know who thought it would be a good idea”, “It has potential, but I would have done it differently…”.

An innovative product that triggers these kinds of reactions from users likely did not undergo a thorough rethinking process during the design phase. This process is essential and should occur during the most crucial stage of product development: immersion.

This step might be uncomfortable because a company’s needs and those of its customers are not always aligned or even compatible. However, embracing this discomfort is necessary to make informed decisions and identify concepts with the highest potential for success. Our team is here to support you throughout this process and help you converge on a successful solution.

Understanding the Event that Sparked the Idea

A concept is a story you tell. Like narratives, there are multiple ways to articulate your idea, depending on your audience’s level of knowledge. To comprehend how the latest episode in a popular TV series unfolds, it’s usually necessary to understand the events that triggered the previous ones.

The same principle applies to innovative ideas. The solution space is where the story unfolds. It’s during this phase that different avenues are explored to help move the idea forward. However, it’s crucial to have a clear understanding of the problem before proposing solutions.

During the immersion phase, our creatively-minded professionals strive to thoroughly understand the context of your innovative idea from top to bottom. This begins with actively listening to your company’s needs, and especially those of the users who will interact with your innovation.

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Focusing on the Problem

When we delve into the reasons behind an idea, we find ourselves in the problem space. Here, we aim to put ourselves in your shoes, and in the shoes of the users who will ultimately benefit from your solution.

Your expertise in your field, and the language you use, are unique to you. When you come to us, you might talk about the functionalities of your innovative product like this: “We need to…“, “We need to be able to do this…“, “We need to use this mechanism to…“. It’s natural for you to think at this level of detail because you’ve mastered your field.

However, it’s important to avoid jumping too quickly into the solution space. To guide you effectively, we prefer to return to the problem space by confronting your innovative idea with questions such as:

Why do we need…“, “What would happen if we did it differently?“, “What is the value of this approach?“.

Once we’ve answered these questions, we can then focus on your value proposition and the solutions you’ve already implemented.

As creative professionals, we are trained to interpret, reframe, and communicate effectively. By defining a clear problem, we can share our expertise and develop a coherent strategy for your product development.

A Good Idea Doesn’t Guarantee the Success of an Innovative Product

To achieve commercial success, an innovative product doesn’t necessarily have to reinvent the wheel with a technical breakthrough. While technical prowess can ensure engineering success and attract the curiosity of professionals and the general public, they won’t sell if they don’t address a relevant market.

Above all, an innovative product must add value and fulfill a need. That’s where our expertise in innovation strategy can help you make the right choices.

Author & collaborators

Written by
William

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