Concept development & process
product development · concept development · problem framing · double diamond · design thinking · requirement setting · concept selection · Pugh and weighted decision matrices · design of experiments · Build-Measure-Learn · biologically inspired design
- Skill
- Concept development & process
- Methods
- double diamond · problem framing · requirement setting · Pugh and weighted decision matrices · Build-Measure-Learn · design of experiments · biologically inspired design
- Learned
- Biologically Inspired Design, DTU · Product Development: phases and process, DTU · Holistic Design of Engineering Systems, DTU · Facilitating Innovation in Multidisciplinary Teams, DTU · MSc thesis
This is the part of a project I am best at, and it is also the part that is hardest to show in a portfolio, since the output of good framing is usually that a team stops building the wrong thing rather than that something visible gets built. Here COBOD is the example I keep coming back to, as the brief we were given was about process documentation, however the problem underneath it turned out to be that 41 printers had been sold with only two of them identical, which quietly cost R&D a seventh of its capacity and which we were able to put at 5.3 million DKK over five years.
Furthermore what separates the projects where this worked from the ones where it did not is whether the requirement was written down before anything was built. Here the thesis is the clearest case, since every one of the 109 experiments began as a written, falsifiable hypothesis, and this is what made it possible to kill my own starting assumption in phase 1 rather than defend it.
Concept development
Concept development is what I spent six months doing full time at the LEGO Group's Creative Play Lab, where my concept was selected for further development, ranked first out of 41 pitches and first among the concepts from seven other design interns. It is important to note that the work itself is covered by confidentiality, so what I can state is the shape of it rather than the content, meaning original concepts taken from idea to tested physical prototype and iterated against what came out of toy testing rather than against my own judgement. Furthermore the pattern outside LEGO has been similar, since the brewing installation for the museum caravan started as my idea and my first prototype before the team built on it, and SkillWalls came out of a fairly plain observation, in that Denmark throws away an estimated 18,000 tonnes of gypsum a year largely because partition walls cannot be taken down without destroying them.
Keywords
concept development · idea generation · concept sketching · play and experience concepts · prototype-led concept work · pitching
/images/brewing-experience/hero.webp
Brewing pot installation glowing with coloured light and rising mist
Brew your own beer, a multisensory museum installation
Team of 6, original idea, first prototype and all the programming
Aesthetic experience design for the National Museum of Denmark
/images/skillwalls/hero.webp
Rendered interior view of the SkillWalls honeycomb-panel partition dividing an open-plan flat
SkillWalls - a reusable room divider
Team of 6, jointly responsible for prototyping, pitching and researching
Replacing single-use plasterboard partition walls
/images/camper-van-key/hero.webp
Pencil drawing of a hand holding the folding key concept, showing four button icons across the body and a blade-style key shaft extending from one end
Camper van key
Team of 5, hand sketching and CAD modelling
Industrial design from clay mock-up to printed model
Problem framing
Most briefs describe a symptom, and the useful work is usually one level below the brief. At COBOD we were asked about process documentation, however the problem underneath was that 41 printers had been sold with only two of them identical, and once that was measured it came to a seventh of R&D's capacity, or 5.3 million DKK over five years with no capital investment needed to fix it. Furthermore my bachelor's thesis at GEA was the same shape, since the question was not how to generate more ideas but why radical ones stalled on the way through an organisation built for incremental ones, and at Herlev Hospital the observation study moved the problem from a busy lab to a specific interruption pattern worth 98.8 staff hours a year.
Keywords
problem framing · reframing the brief · root cause analysis · AS-IS analysis · quantifying the problem · stakeholder mapping
/images/cobod/hero.webp
A COBOD BOD2 gantry 3D printer mid-build on a round concrete house, outdoors under a blue sky
COBOD
Team of 5, facilitated the process and ran stakeholder interviews
Finding the cost of a product that was never the same twice
/images/gea-radical-innovation/hero.webp
Presenting the innovation framework findings in a meeting room
Implementing a Radical Innovation Framework at GEA
Team of 2, everything done jointly, from the interviews to the framework
Why radical ideas stall inside a large manufacturer, and what to change
/images/herlev-microbiology/lab.webp
Microbiology department storage room with a row of sample fridges and shelving
Cutting interruptions in a hospital microbiology lab
Team of 6, observation study, time measurements and the costed case
Observation study and costed business case at Herlev Hospital
Double diamond and requirement setting
The double diamond is the structure I default to, and the half I take most seriously is the define step, since a discover phase that does not end in a written requirement just produces a lot of notes. For the thesis the 11 interviews and 373 mapped quotes ended in a specification rather than in a theme, meaning an entangler needing high shear strength, a diameter below 0.3 mm and high flexibility, a stopper needing high tensile strength, a diameter above 2 mm and a high-friction surface, and a delivery method needing a significant area of effect. Here HappyLight was requirement-led in the same way, as the use cycle was designed around a volunteer with no training and an earth drill, which is what forced 48 hours of runtime across a 7-day festival on a single charge.
Keywords
double diamond · discover and define · requirement setting · design specification · use-cycle design · implementation planning
/images/drone-immobilisation/hero.webp
Rendered concept visual: an interceptor drone approaching a target drone entangled in cord under a parachute
Biologically inspired drone immobilisation
Sole author, designed, built and ran all 109 experiments
Finding the most effective way to stop a drone, through 109 experiments
/images/happylight/hero.webp
Light pillar standing on grass at night, casting a warm pool of light downward and a blue zone glow upward
HappyLight
Team of 7, stakeholder mapping, interviews, data analysis
Off-grid wayfinding light for festival campsites
/images/facilitating-innovation/hero.webp
A 3D-printed toy tractor prototype with a fold-out ramp, photographed on gravel
Facilitating innovation in multidisciplinary teams
Facilitator, coached another team through assumptions to prototyping roadmap
Coaching another team from assumptions to a prototyping roadmap
Concept selection
Choosing between concepts is where a team is most likely to pick the one its loudest member prefers, so I would rather score them even when the result confirms what everyone already thought. On the camper van key two concepts went through to scoring, one inspired by a Swiss Army knife and one shaped like the van itself, and the Swiss Army knife concept won on comfort in the hand under a Pugh matrix. Furthermore the sorting bin was chosen from three concepts on a weighted decision matrix and scored 7.9 against the two alternatives, while on the Snickers project the prioritisation ran through a structured circularity framework in order to come back with two initiatives rather than with a list.
Keywords
concept selection · Pugh matrix · weighted decision matrix · criteria weighting · prioritisation · trade-off analysis
/images/camper-van-key/hero.webp
Pencil drawing of a hand holding the folding key concept, showing four button icons across the body and a blade-style key shaft extending from one end
Camper van key
Team of 5, hand sketching and CAD modelling
Industrial design from clay mock-up to printed model
/images/waste-sorting-bin-and-service/wireflow.webp
A wireflow diagram in Danish mapping the website's screens from the homepage through product configuration to checkout
A modular sorting bin and the service that sells it
Team of 6, ethnographic user research and the usability testing
Product and digital service designed together for 10 waste categories
/images/snickers-circular/hero.webp
Close-up of a construction worker kneeling in Snickers Workwear trousers with a KneeGuard patch
Circular transition path for Snickers Workwear
Team of 5, worked jointly throughout on the transition plan
A prioritised route to circularity for a 5 million garment business
Build-Measure-Learn and design of experiments
Build-Measure-Learn is the loop I use when the answer is not knowable from desk work. The thesis ran three of these loops across 109 experiments, where every test object began as a written, falsifiable hypothesis, and this is what made phase 1 useful, since it killed my own starting assumption that more string loops would entangle better. It is important to note that the loops were deliberately run for breadth rather than for statistical significance, and that a mid-project error, where an acrylic enclosure was bouncing test objects back into the propeller and inflating the results, meant every earlier result had to be re-read against it. Furthermore GoGreen ran four iterations against targets set in advance, and on Facilitating Innovation I coached another team through assumption mapping to a validation matrix and a prototyping roadmap rather than through their solution.
Keywords
Build-Measure-Learn · design of experiments · falsifiable hypotheses · iteration against stated targets · assumption mapping · validation matrix · prototyping roadmap
/images/drone-immobilisation/hero.webp
Rendered concept visual: an interceptor drone approaching a target drone entangled in cord under a parachute
Biologically inspired drone immobilisation
Sole author, designed, built and ran all 109 experiments
Finding the most effective way to stop a drone, through 109 experiments
/images/gogreen/hero.webp
Screens from the final GoGreen prototype laid out in sequence
GoGreen
Team of 6, first prototype UI, usability testing and the pitch
UX design and prototyping against measured targets
/images/facilitating-innovation/hero.webp
A 3D-printed toy tractor prototype with a fold-out ramp, photographed on gravel
Facilitating innovation in multidisciplinary teams
Facilitator, coached another team through assumptions to prototyping roadmap
Coaching another team from assumptions to a prototyping roadmap
Biologically inspired design
Biologically inspired design is a DTU course and also the method that produced the thesis result. Phase 1 came out of a spiderweb-inspired hexagon, which was the one geometry that entangled and stopped the motor cleanly, while phase 3 was reframed after the Cape sundew, which catches insects with a fast adhesive and then closes slowly and mechanically, and this is what moved the work from hunting for one optimal string to testing a two-part entangler plus stopper. Here the useful part was not the organism but the function it performs, since translating catch-then-restrain into a material pair is what made the frayed rope findable at all.
Keywords
biologically inspired design · function-based abstraction · biomimetic analogy · nature as a solution database
The research that feeds the discover phase sits under User research & testing.