Concept

Why?

When you develop a new product or service, the concept summarizes 'the big idea' or 'the main principle' on which your solution will be based. For example, most traditional churches have a floor plan based on a cross so God can recognize a church from the sky. Validate your concept(s) with stakeholders to determine desirability and feasibility.

How?

Usually several concepts are developed during the concept phase. Each concept should describe the whole, not a part. Your concepts can originate for example from ideation sessions, a requirement list or a USP. Describe the concept in a concise manner. A concept should at least describe which problem you are solving, for whom, using what means and what opportunity you are creating.

Ingrediënts

• Be sure to have equally attended concepts.
• A quick and dirty prototyping approach to validate your concept.
• Being able to choose a concept that is optimal for all stakeholders, instead of your personal preference.

In practice

In many projects where the solution doesn't follow straightforwardly from the problem description, designers develop multiple concepts as an intermediate step.