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Simple & Pragmatic Problem Solving
#42Chapter 5: Individual Creative Option Generation• Individual Creative OptionsCreative ThinkingIndividual and group Mode1-2 hours(Fast)

Fresh Eye

From the book "Advanced Problem-Solving Toolbox: 115 Creative Plays" | Compiled & Edited by: Mojtaba Goudarzi, Open translation: Mehrshid Goudarzi
Executive Synopsis & Core Logic:

Inviting people who are not familiar with the project and work area to observe the problem and extract original and unconventional proposals without organizational prejudices.

Operational Parameters & Specifications

Category
Individual Creative Options
Dominant Thinking
Creative
Participation
Individual and group
Estimated TimeFast
1-2 hours
Fast
Input Format
Views and observations of outside observers without prejudice
Output Format
Idea generation
Key Application
Improving customer experience (CX), redesigning store spaces, improving customer service processes and uncovering hidden product frictions.
Core Differentiator:

Using the intuitive intelligence and childish/naive questions of outside observers to break through the expert blind spots of the project trustees.

Quick Field Example:

inviting a student, a consultant and a 7-year-old child to a branch of a chain store to discover the causes of customer dissatisfaction in the waiting line.

Operational Benefits & Implementation Risks

Advantages & Value Creation:

Rapidly destroying expert biases ("we've always done it this way"), very low cost, and discovering very obvious and forgotten solutions.

Risks & Potential Trade-offs:

possibility of receiving non-operational ideas due to external observers' ignorance of technical or legal limitations.

Real-World Organizational & Industry Scenarios

Retail and bank branches: observation of traffic flow and customer delays by random observers to modify the layout.
Software and application design: Usability test by users who have not had any familiarity with the system.
After-sales service and support: audit the product return process from the perspective of less experienced customers to eliminate unnecessary complications.

Strategic Rationale & Why to Apply

1Breaking career blindness (Tunnel Vision): Professionals don't notice obvious inefficiencies after years of working in a field.
2The audacity of simple questioning: A stranger is more than willing to ask, "Why are you doing this?" He is not ashamed.
3True empathy with the general audience: End customers are usually like casual observers, not sophisticated engineers of the organization.
4Generating high diversity in ideas: Non-linear approaches resulting from the intersection of heterogeneous age and expertise perspectives.

Conceptual Framework & Book Method Description

The "Fresh Eye" technique is based on the psychological principle that experts within the system often suffer process blindness due to "habituation to the status quo".

In this technique, the process, product or critical bottleneck of the organization is exposed to the observation of people who have no expertise in that field; For example, a new student, a random customer, an employee from a completely unrelated department, or even a child. These people are asked to honestly say what they see, what bothers them, and what changes they would make if they were the manager. The simple and uncensored suggestions of these outside observers open the closed doors that had delayed the expert teams for months.

Step-by-Step Real-World Implementation Scenario

Transforming the customer experience and product return queue in a chain hypermarket using the new look technique
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Step 1: Defining the challenge and selecting diverse external observersSelection of 3 external observers completely unrelated to store management: 1) computer student 2) a business management consultant 3) a 7-year-old child with parents.
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Step 2: Field observation and recording of free observationsThe observers observed and recorded the behavior of customers, the checkout line and the return registration process from different angles for 2 hours.
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Step 3: Eliciting Raw Observers' ViewsThe student asked, “Why does a customer have to stand in line for a paper form and not have a digital barcode reader?”; The consultant said: "Frontline employees are not allowed to make decisions and wait for the supervisor for each signature"; The child said: "Waiting in this queue is very boring and ugly!"
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Step 4: Designing an integrated solution package1) Setting up automatic digital kiosks for registration of returns by scanning barcodes (student idea) 2) Granting full authority to attendants for immediate settlement under 500 thousand tomans without the need for supervisor's signature (consultant's idea) 3) Equipping the waiting area with touch games and children's entertainment screens (child's idea).
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Step 5: Evaluation of results within 30 daysCustomer waiting time decreased from 18 minutes to 3 minutes and the customer satisfaction index (CSAT) jumped from 52% to 89%.

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Previous Play (#41)
The Focused-Object Technique
Next Play (#43)
Idea Bits and Racking
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