Creative exercise – ICEDIP method

For this weeks activity we were tasked with undertaking one of the following creative exercises:

• Put the contents of your pockets on a scanner and create a character out of elements of the image produced, using any means you wish.
• Write a 500 word story using the numbers 1 to 12.
• Change one rule of the card game Snap and play it with someone else. Revise it on the basis of their feedback of the game experience.
• Spend 20 minutes undertaking the ‘I’ phase (inspiration) of the ICEDIP method for a new idea for an app, and then spend 10 mins evaluating the results.

For my creative exercise I chose to explore the ICEDIP method and use this to rapidly explore ideas for an app that I will prototype later in the week for the prototyping sprint for my Figma SMART goal. The problem to solve is:

“How can we make political policies clearer, make voting clearer and attract a younger audience.”

The first activity was a 20 minute brainstorm coming up with as many ideas as possible without critiquing or analysing them. Here are the results.

The next activity was then to take these ideas and take 10 minutes to evaluate them. Here is my analysis.

My breadth of ideas was good, ranging from AR and gamification to tinder style swiping. Lots of ideas are not that note-worthy, unique or interesting enough to get attention and promote people to take greater interest. Ideas such as connecting people in a ‘FaceTime’ group call isn’t necessarily a bad idea but I am not sure it would make a good app. This might be better suited to news outlets or YouTube video style content. A problem for the AR app that allows voters to see the impact of their decisions is that it it unrealistic and almost impossible to be accurate. This is a flawed concept that might be better suited to solving this problem if the AR was used to see where to vote or key places to get more information.

Here are a few ideas i think would be worth moving forward:

• Tinder style swiping app where you choose policies and candidates
• ‘Fake news’ fact checker (chatbot)
• Recap each political term as a mini-Netflix series
• Gamify the app by creating a quiz to work out who you should vote for

These ideas have been narrowed down as they are interactive, they call out to the younger generation and can educate voters about policies, candidates and the political parties better than news sources. 

Overall I really enjoyed trying out the ICEDIP method and I found sticking to the timings allowed myself to focus and speed through ideas. As this was my first time using the method I found it very straight forward and enjoyable! I would definitely use this again at the start of my project and ideating for 20 minutes is probably the right amount of time in order to gain quantity and quality.