So you have some Focus Areas. Now you need some unique insights to ideate upon.
For some Focus Areas it can be fairly intuitive. For example we had “disruption management” with easyJet as one such area, so to gather insights we went on the ground at Gatwick airport and shadowed the teams who dealt with such situations.
For others it isn’t so obvious: “mental wellbeing” as a Focus Area is a little more challenging. Sure you could do user interviews and ask people what they want, but chances are a lot of the low hanging fruit in this space has already been done. You’ll likely need to look at it from a different perspective.
Enter Threads
Threads are something you pull on.
Threads may lead to something, or they may lead to nothing. They are thought starters to try and generate insights by looking at a Focus Area in a different way.
Some example threads:
Democratise access to something. Take traditionally high end services and use technology to drive down cost to achieve mass scale. Examples: Babylon, Dadi, Uber
Design a holistic experience. Combine traditionally fragmented products and services into a single cohesive one in order to create a superior user experience. Examples: Parsley Health
Fight taboos with a pure play brand. Take traditionally taboo subjects or products, and create a new brand that reframes it in a positive and new light. Examples: Hims
Example
So let’s take a look at using some threads for “mental wellbeing”:
- “Target an underserved segment”. The thought experiment here is to think around segments not already using mindfulness apps like Headspace and Calm.
- What segment of people aren’t using mindfulness apps?
- Can we understand why they’re not?
- What markets haven’t Calm and Headspace launched in yet?
- “Undercut a competitor”. Headspace and Calm make their money through a paid subscription, but is there an alternative revenue model for providing this content?
- What if sold a product such as essential oils as a mindfulness tool, and gave the content away for free?
- What if we had sponsored content?
- “Democratise access to something”. Headspace and Calm have focussed on mediation, but there are other areas of mindfulness and mental wellbeing they have not.
- What areas other than mediation could we focus on?
- Speak to behavioural experts where they see market gaps
These threads have given us a number of different angles to think around “mental wellbeing”.
Thread Perioidic Table
A by no means exhaustive table of threads to try:
