Concept Design Workshop

For design students, early-career designers and practitioners building a more deliberate process. Use individually or in a facilitated workshop. The example is illustrative; adapt the method to your context.

Work through the activity

01 · Write the opportunity

Identify the audience, situation, desired change and constraints. State what the concept must enable rather than prescribing its appearance.

02 · Explore three directions

Create three concepts with different underlying mechanisms. Give each a name, a sketch or storyboard, and one sentence explaining how it works.

03 · Show the use sequence

For each concept, show the trigger, key interaction, result and recovery when something goes wrong.

04 · Compare fairly

Choose three to five criteria before scoring: user value, feasibility, accessibility, risk or resource needs. Explain each score and mark unsupported assumptions.

05 · Build the deciding experiment

Select the concept with the clearest rationale, not merely the highest total. Prototype its largest uncertainty and define a continue, revise or stop signal.

Worked example

Illustrative workshop example: three ways to improve a public waiting experience use seating information, an assisted queue and a physical token. The team tests the uncertainty behind each direction.

Paid worksheet