Planning Workshops
A case study to illustrate the work and the processes used in planning an NPD workshop for the 'Future of Kitchens.'
Every design studio has its own workshop process for New Product Development. As a relatively new design function, Kingfisher did not have this in place, so drawing on the processes used in past agencies and tailoring elements to suit this particular business, I developed the process illustrated on this page to not only deliver product solutions but also build a road map for the future product development.
Future of Kitchens : Workshop Plan Overview
The intention of the 'Future of Kitchens,' workshop was to generate ideas for new product development for the kitchens category within Kingfisher. The overview shows 3 distinct phases, ‘Pre-workshop,’ prep involved gathering research, trends and insights that could be used to inform and direct the workshop as well as finding stimulus to show during the workshop to inspire idea generation. The ‘Workshop,’ itself was split into 5 distinct areas which look directly at Kingfisher’s pillars of ‘Well Being, Sustainability, User Experience, Use of Space & Technology,’ around which idea generation was based. Finally, the ‘Workshop Distillation,’ takes all of the ideas generated during the workshop and evaluates them through various criteria and allows them to be placed in a roadmap for future development.
Building Workshop Discussion Points
The workshop consisted of different members of the Range team this included Product Leads who manage the process of delivering all OEB products, Quality & Sourcing teams, Engineers and designers. To facilitate good idea generation, it was important to generate suitable discussion pieces. In this instance we used internal ‘signals,’ which were based on macro trends, in conjunction with stakeholder & expert interviews and desk research to build a series of hypothesis for each of the Kingfisher pillars, these are then filtered down to a few questions around which idea generation could occur.
Managing the Workshop Flow
For the workshop to flow in a smooth way, I mapped out the flow of each session, this included an introduction to the pillar (Well Being, Sustainability, User Experience, Use of Space & Technology), presentation of stimulus through videos and images, short breaks, which also allow time for information to be absorbed and to give time for people to gesticulate and time to present back ideas so that the group could rate the ideas generated. For anyone facilitating a session, I also created 'facilitator notes,' which included prompts and starter ideas to get the groups talking and to avoid dead spots.
Distillation of Ideas & Road Mapping
All of the ideas generated (sketches) were put into a document in which they were grouped by the product area,product pillar, the score given by the group during the workshop and a viability rating. The viability tells you how easily the solution can be delivered (can it be manufactured easily / is the technology available to make this work ). These ratings then allowed the ideas to be mapped onto the chart which show when they could possibly be delivered and how easily.