The other day, I met with some members of an undergraduate engineering design team. They had asked if I would meet with them, because they wanted some guidance on whether to keep going or give up on their current design for a heliostat.
A design team usually answers to a customer. Sometimes, the customer is a manager in the company. Sometimes, it’s an outside person or organization. It’s the interplay of design team and customer that determines what will be counted as a successful completion of the project. When the design team comes up with an idea and presents it to the customer, the customer might say, “Sorry. That won’t work for us.”
The customer helps provide the walls inside of which the magic happens.
I asked the undergraduate design team to whom they had to deliver their product, whether as a design or in the form of a working prototype. I asked who their customer was. The answer they gave explained why they had sought me out for help. “We don’t really have a customer,” the members said. “We used to, but now we don’t.”
With no customer, it’s very difficult to figure out where the walls are. And before you have walls, it’s very difficult to focus your work into magic.
So that’s the direction I sent them. I showed them a creativity tool a group could use to help it map out the walls for itself. It’s hard work, especially for a relatively large design group, but it’s a way forward.