Concept Creation Methodology

Defining a conceptual wrapper for ideation.

In the beginning of a process to search for a conceptual wrapper the following conceptual frames can be viewed as a method to bring focus to the search.

Conceptual Frames:

There are different types of conceptual frames.

Subjective frames:

The audience’s response based on their emotional interpretation. This will be determined by who the message is intended for and their cultural and sociopolitical views and origins. So defining the target audience is key.

Structural frames:

The structural frame refers overall structure or facture* (the way a thing is made) and the use of cultural symbols.

The cultural frame:

The cultural frame is a reflection of facets of culture and how they filter the response to the product , such as race or class issues, religion or philosophy

Semiotic Frames

Semiotics is the study of signs and sign processes like indication, designation, likeness, analogy, allegory, metonymy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication. Italian semiotician and novelist Umberto Eco had a view that every cultural phenomenon may be studied as communication.* When Product Evaluation is overlaid on top of conceptual framework criteria a conceptual wrapper can be created as a communication device.

Product Evaluation:

Products value:

Defining the products value or unique selling point and it differentiates in the market place. Broadly the differentiation factors can be describes as: Better, faster, cheaper, more functional, cooler, better design, ergonomics, aspirations, and philosophical to mention a few.

Environment:

The environment the product aims to please, in other words the market including sociopolitical aspects like class, ideologies, technological trend morphology and pressures.

The audience

Who is the recipient of the message? What role and value do they have? The cultural references surrounding the recipient of the message needs to be explored. Once the information is acquired it can be filtered by applying conceptual frames. OK, so now we have all the pieces, but what to do with it?

Let’s take an example:

A fictitious software product that is related to Project Management. The Products evaluation leads to it having:

Ease of use, Collaborative, A one stop shop for asset management, lets say that this is the main differentiator. Wouldn’t it be nice to have project management software that also managed assets? The intended targets are tech executives in North America.

Lets begin with isolating what frustrates people most in the work place and with project management software…the pain points. Without a doubt a pain point is complexity, project and file management, and unexpected change.

It’s constraining and leads to added hours at work and stress. What’s the opposite of that? Freedom to move around and efficient time management, so we know the marketing material could be successful if we focused on lifestyle and how it was improved by the software’s efficiencies.

We’d then look for semiotic signals of lifestyle freedoms that pertained to the target audience in North America…

Travel.

So the campaign for instance can be about freedom and mobility.

* Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics, Indiana University Press, 1978. p 310 endnote #47

* “Facture”, Chicago Journals, American Art, Vol. 23, No. 1, Spring 2009 “Facture refers to the way a thing is made… Paying attention to facture is paying attention to artistic process.”