Overview: After you have converged on a meaningful design challenge, you will want to generate a large quantity of ideas. One way to generate a large number of ideas is by fostering a brainstorming session between designers and users. However, engaging and finding users can be difficult, especially if they are outside your personal network. This activity introduces a crowd-based approach to brainstorming by using Reddit, a community bulletin board. You will learn to communicate with stakeholders on Subreddit communities by asking them questions to support your ideation process. Challenge: You find yourself in need of new and fresh ideas from outside of your group. How might you interact with community members on Reddit to help you come up with ideas for your new service design? Prep: Understand that Reddit is an online community where people post questions/comments/links and foster discussion. Materials: Computer with Internet access Concepts to understand: Be sensitive to the beliefs and situations of different community members. Do not lie or misrepresent yourself on Reddit. Activity:

1. Get into teams of 3-4, and create a new Reddit account for your team. Feel free to use your own account if you have one. (2 minutes)

2. Think of one ideation question around your design challenge. Good ideation questions consist of the “subject,” “challenge,” “context,” and “constraint”. (10 minutes)

3. List all the stakeholders in your design challenge. (2 minutes) 4. Find one Subreddit on which you will post your question (5 minutes)

Do this by searching in the Reddit search bar for communities that may be representative of your stakeholder communities. For example, if your design challenge is to improve the waiting in line experience for parents and children, you might search for “parenting.”

Reddit will return a list of possible Subreddits related to your search term. Subreddit communities are demoted by an “/r/”.

Bulletin Board Brainstorms Activity Time: 30 minutes Teams of 3-4

When choosing your top Subreddit, take into account how active the community is. Reports of the Subreddit activity can be viewed in the right column in the Subreddit page.

The “Mommit” Subreddit has 7,859 people subscribed to the thread and 30 people currently viewing the page. You should try and find a Subreddit page that is both relevant to your design challenge and has many users currently viewing the page. More than 5 users currently viewing the page is good.

5. Post your question into your chosen subreddit. Do this by clicking “Submit a new text post” on the right column of the Subreddit page:

Then, write your question in the “title” section of the new text post, and click submit. (3 minutes)

6. After you post your question, make sure to respond to anyone who has answered your question. Ask them to expand or clarify their posts to foster a discussion.

Make sure to check your question feed at least once a day for new posts. (5 days)

7. After five days of fostering a Reddit discussion, mark your question thread as resolved and thank the people who contributed to the thread. We will send instructions by email on how to do this in 5 days.

Reflection: After 5 days of fostering a discussion, please record your responses.

1. What are the benefits and dangers of ideating with stakeholders/users? 2. How are Reddit users different from the general public? How will this affect your data? 3. What were the most interesting ideas that Reddit users came up with? 4. What ideas did you come up with as a result of participating in the Reddit discussion? 5. Will you move forward with any of the Reddit generated or inspired ideas? Which ones and Why? 6. How does the quality of ideas compare to brainstorming in-person? 7. What did you find most difficult or annoying about this activity? 8. Feel free to provide further comments or feedback.