Feature List Exercise: Water Bottles

In the YCISL workshops, you worked on a project and made a rollout presentation. Sometimes, I have asked students to focus on just the top three most compelling features of the project and emphasize just those three features in the presentation. We have now designed an exercise just to demonstrate the process of brainstorming and selecting these primary features. We start with a group of water bottles, each with different features. Then teams get to examine each water bottle and create a list of all the features they notice. They then are asked to design their own water bottle. They start by selecting three features from the list they created (or they can choose features that they already know about but are not listed). Next, they have to come up with a special/crazy/extraordinary feature which would potentially differentiate their bottle (remember Competitive Advantage?) After that, they select a sustainability feature. The fun really begins as they create an advertisement on the whiteboard for their water bottle; and only three features can be listed (so two will get tossed in the end) – this requires a few prototyping iterations. An outsider gives feedback and modification can be made to the ad. Finally, everyone votes on the water bottle they would want. This is proving to be a good lesson in focusing on the feature list to promote a compelling creative idea. Try this yourself. You can do it as an exercise for yourself or with others. In the end, think about how your “personal” features stand out when you introduce yourself to others. It’s a very similar process.

[This entry was originally posted on the YCISL LinkedIn Group Discussion board]