Occationally, we have internal workshops to improve our processes and to try out new methods. For this workshop we had three days. One common theme was presented each day but individual brainstorming and potential identification was encouraged.

Each design should be modelled and rendered and also be easily communicated in one image. These goals and the tight timeframe forced non-critical idea generation methods and high-speed 3d-visualisation to be used. Individual ideas that often don’t make it to presentation level were allowed to bloom and show off the inherent potential.

The three days were structured by one team member (the facilitator – the facilitators preparation is not included in the three day time frame). First a one hour kick-off meeting too place. The facilitator first presented the main theme being 'loudspeaker design'.

After the theme and tech presentation three abstract themes were presented using moodboards. One theme – one moodboard. The abstract themes were “Brands” (moodboard with four brand names with logo), “Personalities” (four pictures of persons) and “Architecture” (pictures of buildings). After a question round, coffee and candy each team member set off to produce as many ideas as possible and visualise and present the best ones. The rest of the three days was semi-structured meaning that individual idea generation was encouraged but at the end of each day a common meeting took place to ensure everyone had gained momentum and to track the progress as the twenty ideas was a common goal. Hence everyone had to ensure that the others had continuous progress else the goal would be missed.

The result was 20 very different speaker concepts...