hello and welcome to the bottom up skills podcast I might pass. And I am the chief executive officer at quality science, and we are well on our way into a series dedicated to design. Thinking, and in this episode, we're going to dig into where we can find inspiration and look as creative and wonderful as we all naturally are.

Sometimes we get a little stuck and, uh, what's so great about design thinking is that there's lots of really, uh, practical ways that we can generate some new insights, new ideas and inspiration, um, and they can lead us to uncovering some really. Powerful product insights, but more so than that, that might lead to a new product and your service.

Maybe, maybe it's just a feature, but Hey, adding yeah. A new feature to an existing product could lead to some great things and Hey, who knows, maybe these inspiration techniques might lead us to a whole new. Company. So where, uh, into the fourth of our 14 part series on design thinking. So make sure that if you're interested in anything we discussed today, jump over to bottom up.io, where you can pick up a free master class on design thinking.

You can download the slides. We go a lot deeper into some of these topics, but the aim today is really bite-size inspiration for you to get ideas that could really change products, services, and businesses, but more than anything can change the world of your customers and of your users. Okay. So I mentioned that I'd have eight tips for you, eight tips on how to get inspiration.

That would be very inline with a design thinking methodology. So let's get straight into them. Number one, you're a little stuck. You've got an existing business and you're like, Hmm, I'm not sure what we should do next. Well, here is my go to do a quick survey of your exams, assisting customers now. Um, there's very little barriers to entry trying to do that very few blockers.

Yeah. You could do it on your Facebook page. Um, you could post something onto your website or maybe you have a newsletter where you can invite people. To answer your survey. Now in this podcast series, we're going to do a lot, um, around how to do research and, and in particular, the quantity of part, which is what surveys are all connected to.

So I don't want to get too much into how to do a survey, but let me tell you some of my experiences. Um, number one, if you have one or two open questions to your existing customers, you can really. You can really get some interesting inspiration. You can get some interesting feedback that you might not have expected.

And secondly, one of the things that I find is really powerful about surveying your existing customers is that you can discover the, the picture you have of who your customer is. Um, might be a little different to reality, and this can create a really interesting opportunity for you to provide new services.

Based on this insight. So look, number one, if you're a bit stuck on inspiration for creating a new product service or business, reach out, survey your customers, make it 10, 12 questions, max, but get out there and talk to them and challenge yourself. Not to assume too much about them and see what answers you get back.

Okay. So that's number one for a little bit of inspiration sent out. A survey to your existing customers, if you want to take things next level. And I know for some of you, you may have done, uh, at home interviews, uh, with customers, um, or in office interviews. This is a lot more effort than a survey, but I think there's a lot more, uh, opportunity as well.

Uh, I think that the, the most powerful thing you can do is to go and see your customer. Uh, whether they're in a business or at a home to see them in context and whether it's a home or the office, or maybe they're at college or school to see them trying to get jobs done in there. Native environment, so to speak, it's, it's a really powerful, uh, uh, technique.

So you do a home visit, you have a discussion guide, but it also gives you the opportunity to understand the context and in particularly, uh, the greater context. So the world is bigger than just your product and service and seeing customers at home or in the office can be really powerful. These first two are slam dunk real straight on target design thinking approaches.

And later on, we'll talk about how to filter ideas out of those. Um, so that's the first two. Third one is a really, really. A curious minded person, we'll go out and we'll read an industry report or a customer trends report. You might get that from your industry, buddy, that you're in, or you might go to something like e-marketer or any of the trend watching, uh, services out there.

If you just put TrendWatching into Google, you'll get a ton now. That's perhaps not the most, uh, powerful advice I can give here. I would encourage you. If you read one of these reports or websites is ask yourself this simple question. Is this trend an opportunity? Or a threat. Now this trend may be directly related to your business, or maybe it's indirect, maybe you're in the fashion business and you see something happening in the sports business.

Maybe you could ask yourself, well, what's the opportunity in the sports business that I can leverage into fashion, a really good exercise to do so opportunity first threat key question to ask yourself when looking at a trend and it can be outside of your given practice area or industry. Um, another, uh, one number for, uh, a bit of inspiration can be conducting a review of your competition.

And, uh, for this one, I would focus on pricing and value creation. So you could do an analysis of pricing in your industry between yourself and others, and, um, ask yourself who's creating the most. Value really interesting exercise might lead to a few debates in the boardroom, but it's a very, very good exercise for inspiration because maybe you see that your competition have actually found new, different, or better value than how you think about it.

And that might lead to some inspiration. So that's the first four were halfway through. So just a quick recap survey, your existing customers. Number one. Number two, do an at home in depth, home into interview. Super powerful. Number three, ask yourself where's the opportunity or threat in a new trend or industry report, and then do a pricing and value comparison amongst yourself in your competition.

I mean, that could keep you very busy. I would already bet that you will find some. Some wonderful insight in those first four, but let's keep going. Cause I've got another four for you and I hope they are as equally powerful for you. Another place to get inspiration is your customer themselves. So you can invite users to cocreate with you.

And there's no better example of that than Lego. Lego has been inviting customers to create designs with their Lego pieces for years. And this was really central to the turnaround of their business because people got involved reengaged with Allego, maybe a little bit of Stavo sponsorship helped as well, but this cocreation piece has been huge in the Renaissance of Lego.

Okay. So cocreation with your customers. That's number five, number six. Uh, this one is it's roll up the sleeves and getting into some icky stuff. Review customer feedback and complaints. Now, particularly if you're at a larger organization, there'll be a log of all of the customer feedback or even complaints.

It's natural. Can can't please, everybody. What would be really interesting to do with your customer feedback is to cluster it in themes. So let's see, uh, what are some compare, contrast and trend analysis looks like, and maybe we see as an unmet need for customers and Venezuela, new service, new feature in your offering.

Okay. Number seven. Now we're going to get a little quotes, uh, right here and we're going to dive into...