101 Design Methods

mode 4FRAME INSIGHTS

In the Know Context and Know People modes, we discussed how to understand the context of an innovation project and how to uncover peoples’ experiences and needs. We move from gaining such knowledge to clearly understanding that knowledge in Frame Insights. We move from researching and collecting data to applying various analytical frameworks to the data so that we can organize our thinking and gain a clear perspective. The methods and tools in this mode help us distill reams of research into a handful of key insights, and then turn those insights into concise, actionable principles for innovation.

FRAME INSIGHTS                  mindsets

As our mode shifts from knowing the context and the people to revealing insights and framing them up, we are actually moving from the very real world that we have researched to the very abstract world of insights, principles, systems, and ideas. In this mode we begin to make sense of all that we have learned from the real world and start to extract key insights out of large, fuzzy data sets. It is like “cutting cubes out of fog,” in the words of Jay Doblin.

The people for whom we innovate have diverse behaviors and characteristics. The context in which our innovations need to function is complex; it is a dense network ...