Blank Flipcharts Don't Make Magic, But Templates Do

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That "fuzzy front end" of product development, where ideas should flourish, often becomes a frustrating quagmire of unfocused brainstorming sessions and competing perspectives. The truth is, traditional brainstorming doesn't work nearly as well as we've been led to believe.

Drawing from research and decades of experience, this episode reveals why teams facing blank flipcharts produce fewer and lower-quality ideas than those using structured approaches. The solution? Visual models and templates—powerful frameworks that channel creativity rather than stifling it. These tools have transformed quality improvement efforts for nearly a century, and they can revolutionize your concept development process too.

You'll discover how a telecommunications company implemented a simple template change that generated 300% more high-quality ideas in a fraction of the time. We explore why activity theory explains the effectiveness of these approaches, and how proper template design aligns team thinking toward customer-focused solutions. Visual models provide the structure teams need to collaborate effectively, maintain focus, and prevent confusion—turning abstract conversations into concrete design inputs.

Whether you're struggling with cross-functional alignment or searching for ways to improve your team's innovative output, this episode offers practical insights to transform your concept development process. The fuzzy front end doesn't have to be chaotic. With the right visual frameworks, you can guide your team toward designing products customers will love. 

Ready to elevate your development process? Listen now, then visit qualityduringdesign.com for more resources to implement these approaches on your next project.

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About me
Dianna Deeney is a quality advocate for product development with over 25 years of experience in manufacturing. She is president of Deeney Enterprises, LLC, which helps organizations optimize their engineering processes and team perform...

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Quality During Design podcast.
I'm Diana Dini.
The last couple episodes we'vebeen talking about concept
development as part of productdevelopment.
Concept development is thatfuzzy front end at the beginning
of a project.
You have identified a productidea but you haven't started
engineering it yet, you haven'tstarted designing it yet.

(00:21):
It's that fuzzy front end ofproduct development where we're
still defining things andlearning and investigating about
the use space, our customer,the problem space, and in the
last few episodes we talkedabout why it matters.
It matters to the bottom line.
It matters to how successfulour product is in the field, if

(00:43):
our project gets launched at all, how customers feel about it,
market shares, all the businessbottom lines and our experiences
and just working in productdevelopment.
It's also difficult because weare working with a team of
diverse viewpoints that might becoming at the same problem from

(01:04):
a different space.
They may actually be thinkingthat they're solving a different
problem, so we may not bealigned on that and we talked
about that in the last episode.
So concept development isimportant but it's difficult,
not just because of teens, butbecause we don't have anything
to talk about.
We haven't developed anythingyet.

(01:24):
Open brainstorming hasn't seemedto work very well.
In my own experiences andexperiences of others, and from
what I've read too, researchershave studied it that open
brainstorming teams actuallygive fewer and lower quality
ideas than in other methods.
The team leader in a meeting infront of a blank flip chart,

(01:47):
that team will produce fewerideas and those ideas will be
less high quality than if thatteam leader was using a template
.
Is something as simple as amodel or a template.
Allow us to talk with our teamand explore concept development,
that fuzzy front end, andactually get to design inputs.

(02:07):
Yes, they can.
Let's talk more about it afterthis brief introduction.
Hello and welcome to QualityDuring Design, the place to use
quality thinking to createproducts.
Others love for less.
I'm your host, diana Deeney.
I'm a senior level qualityprofessional and engineer with
over 20 years of experience inmanufacturing and design.

(02:28):
I consult with businesses andcoach individuals and how to
apply quality during design totheir processes.
Listen in and then join us.
Visit qualityduringdesigncom.
A challenge with conceptdevelopment is we don't have
anything to talk about.
Sometimes we can go andgenerate some prototypes rapid

(02:50):
prototyping to be able to createsomething that our team can
then tweak and revise, andthere's definitely a place for
prototyping and more than justin concept developmentability,
engineers test prototypes andhalt testing to see what's the
weakest link.
There are also a lot of usecases for prototyping to get

(03:10):
initial customer feedback, butwhen we're working with our team
in concept development, wedon't have anything to work on,
we don't have a prototype or wedon't want to spend the money
and time to make prototypes,which could get expensive.
What do we do?
Just showing up at each other'sdesks or just calling a meeting
to openly talk about stuffdoesn't really seem to work.

(03:32):
However, having a visual modelor a visual template that the
team is working against,co-working against, to develop
ideas toward a given end thatworks.
So what is it?
A visual model represents asystem, a process or concept.

(03:53):
Models include diagrams andcharts.
They help people understand,analyze and communicate complex
information.
Some models can be complicatedlike three-dimensional models of
an engineered product.
For concept development, modelsrepresent ideas and will be
simpler yet still meaningful.

(04:13):
A visual template is astructured framework designed to
facilitate and guide thecreative process within a team.
It helps teams brainstorm in astructured way, organize and
develop innovative ideas, andall this in a visually engaging
and systematic way.
A popular template is abusiness model canvas.

(04:35):
The business model canvas is atool used to plan and understand
businesses.
It's like a map that showsdifferent parts of a business,
such as what it offers and howit makes money.
It shows how all these partsfit together so businesses can
make decisions.
That's an example of a visualtemplate.

(04:56):
Other examples of visual modelsand templates are a lot of
quality tools.
Quality teams like ContinuousImprovement and Six Sigma teams
have used models and templatesfor years to help them work
together with success.
Some of the models that I'veused include flowcharts, five
whys and cause-effect diagramsI've used include flowcharts 5Ys

(05:18):
and cause-effect diagrams,fishbone diagrams and even the
eight disciplines.
Methodology uses a template.
These types of quality toolsare visual models and templates
that have countless stories ofsuccess for nearly 100 years
across different disciplinesones.
It's not just in the qualityworld, though.

(05:38):
There are other design teamsthat use visual models and
templates to be able to work indesign.
A couple of examples are Insidethe Box, with systematic
inventive thinking and usingSprints to solve big problems
and test new ideas.
In just five days, I'll includelinks in the blog to a couple
of episodes where we coveredthose methodologies.

(06:00):
To be able to adapt this forconcept development.
We have to think about why thesetools have been so successful.
What is it that they do for ourteams and for us to be able to
break down complex ideas intosomething that's actionable For
one?
They provide structure Insteadof just meeting open-ended.

(06:21):
We have something that we'reworking on together.
We have certain ideas or thingsthat we want to explore, which
is another reason why they workis because they limit the scope
of what it is we're working on,especially in concept
development.
If we open up ideas to thewhole world, then we might not

(06:42):
get anywhere with our conceptdevelopment.
That doesn't mean that wearen't thorough in making sure
that we cover all the bases.
It's just a matter that everytime you get together, you don't
necessarily need to have yourwhole team on all the bases.
Let's just get everybody tofirst base and talk about that.
The other thing that visualmodels and templates do is they

(07:03):
help us to systematicallycollect and generate ideas with
a team.
We can think about what kind ofthought process has to go into
coming up with an idea and thenstructure our models and
templates to be able to help ourteam in that way.
Here's an interesting study thatkind of demonstrates this.
It was a multinationaltelecommunications company.

(07:27):
They were seeking ideas for afive-year product pipeline.
They asked employees to takepart in unstructured
brainstorming for six monthsusing a generic visual template.
Now, this template promptedthem to give their idea a
headline, describe it in anutshell and then sketch it.
There was also space on thetemplate for employees to list

(07:48):
how their idea might relate toexisting business platforms.
So what's the idea?
What's the name of it?
Give us a sketch of it, and howdoes it relate to what we have
already?
In over six months, peoplegenerated 93 ideas, but only
three were considered highquality.
Here's where the researchersgot involved.

(08:10):
They helped the company leaderschange their visual template to
be more specific to innovation.
The template was about the samesize as the previous one, but
asked different questions with asingle deadline.
It still required an idea nameand description, but it also
asked employees to identifyprospective customers, their

(08:32):
motivations to use the productand the benefits they would
derive from it.
This time, with the editedvisual template, the process
resulted in 11 high-qualityideas in a single session,
versus over six months.
So this change from the generictemplate to the specific

(08:53):
template represents more than300% improvement in the number
of high-quality ideas representsmore than 300% improvement in
the number of high-quality ideasand, in addition to that, using
the structured process with avisual template saved the
company two months of work.
Visual models and templates aresuccessful because of their
association with activity theory.
Activity theory is used tounderstand team activities.

(09:17):
It's used most often ineducational research, psychology
and organizational studies.
According to this theory, usingshared and easy-to-understand
tools improves teamwork,maintains focus and prevents
confusion.
These tools or objects areclear, memorable and ensure
everyone focuses on the samethings.

(09:38):
Clear, memorable and ensureeveryone focuses on the same
things.
A couple of important thingsthat are coming out of this here
is that visual models andtemplates work, but their
effectiveness rely on theirdesign and their alignment with
the task at hand.
In our telecommunicationscompany example, there was a
template.
They were using it, people werefilling it out and it was

(09:59):
generating ideas.
But when they focused more onwhat it is they were trying to
do, they weren't just trying togather wild ideas.
They were trying to gatherideas that would fit into their
current business structure, thatcustomers would love and
provide customers new benefits.
Just the addition of thoseadditional ideas to that

(10:21):
template got people to think andcontribute ideas in a different
way.
They wanted innovation and theywanted happier customers.
So they asked for that fromtheir employees, from their
personnel, and they got thoseideas, a lot of those quality
tools that I mentioned.
Sometimes they fit with theproblem that you're trying to

(10:42):
solve and sometimes they don't.
People have used them for manyyears so they have experience
using them in a particular spotto solve a particular problem or
to get a team to think aboutcertain things at a point in a
project.
That's why some of those largersystems like the 8D problem
solving why it works becauseit's helping you choose the

(11:05):
model or template that's goingto work for you at the time that
you need it.
We can develop the same kind ofthing for concept development
have visual models and templatesthat help our team do concept
development with the aim ofgetting design inputs that we
can design against.
And those inputs are going tobe focused on our customers and

(11:27):
their experience and overallit'll help us in that whole
questioning, investigation,fuzzy, front end of product
development.
It won't be so fuzzy.
With visual models andtemplates we'll reduce the
fuzziness, increase the qualityof our ideas and generally have
better teamwork.

(11:47):
So what's today's insight toaction, structured approaches to
working with a team.
It works.
We get more high quality ideasand in concept development it
leads to targeted design inputs,if we do it right.
If you like this kind of contentand these topics and want to

(12:07):
learn more about quality andreliability and how it applies
to product design development,then visit
qualityduringdesigncom and signup for the newsletter.
On the website there are a lotof free resources and you can
learn more about the qualityduring design approach.
Also, there are a couple of bigannouncements coming, so if you

(12:30):
subscribe to the newsletter,you'll be the first to know
about these big things.
They're going to be resourcesthat are really going to help
you with your productdevelopment processes and
working with yourcross-functional team.
This has been a production ofDini Enterprises.
Thanks for listening.