THE JOURNAL / Strategy
An unusual idea needs a stricter brief.
Five practical questions for deciding whether an unexpected brand or website idea deserves to be built, with examples from Absurd’s studio explorations.
“Nobody else is doing it” is an observation. It is a poor reason to spend a business’s money.
An unusual idea needs to explain itself more clearly than a familiar one. There is a cost to asking somebody to learn a new behaviour. The idea has to repay that effort with something they actually want.
That is where we draw the line between a surprising experience and an elaborate distraction.
Start with the convention that stopped helping
A hotel website lists activities because guests want to know what they can do. That convention makes sense. But someone arriving exhausted may experience the same list as another schedule to fail at.
In our Slow House exploration, the opportunity is to help a guest protect unplanned time. An absence note is a modest intervention. It is also something a person could use before booking a room. The creative question changes from “How do we make a quiet hotel look different?” to “How do we make a quiet break easier to take?”
This is a hypothesis for an imagined business, not a finding from guest research. The next step would be to ask prospective guests what actually stops them switching off, and listen for answers that contradict the idea.
Ask what becomes possible
The Uncensored Library put journalism inside Minecraft. Its medium had a purpose: creating another place to access the work. That is a more demanding standard than making a conventional message look unfamiliar.
For an ordinary business, the change can be smaller. A ceramics catalogue can let someone start with the dimensions of their shelf. A gift can include the sender in the occasion. A venue can make arriving alone feel planned for.
Write the benefit without using the words innovative, immersive or disruptive. If the sentence falls apart, the concept probably needs more work.
Follow the idea into operations
“Keep half. Send half.” sounds like a simple chocolate gift. It creates two shipments, two address checks and potentially two sets of delivery restrictions. Those are part of the design brief.
For Cocoa Post, a live version would need to show the full cost of both parcels before payment. It would need a way to collect a recipient’s address without exposing it unnecessarily. It could suggest a shared tasting after both deliveries, but should never imply that two international parcels will arrive together.
If the proposition only works while these details stay invisible, it does not work yet.
Build the smallest honest demonstration
A prototype should answer a question. Ours use explicit rules and illustrative products. They do not pretend to check live inventory, predict taste or reserve seats.
This makes the next test sharper. Can a person explain what they selected? Can they tell what will happen next? Can they complete the task on a phone without help? What did they assume that the interface never actually promised?
The Design Council’s Double Diamond describes opening up the problem and possible responses, then testing and refining a direction. We find that distinction useful: generating alternatives and choosing between them are different kinds of work. Both need time.
Give the idea permission to fail
A concept is not stronger because its creator defends every detail. Decide what evidence would make you change it.
For a tasting flight, compare demand and fulfilment costs with a familiar single-flavour pack. For a space-first catalogue, check whether people can measure their space accurately enough to use the tool. For a listening room, find out whether a seating preference reassures a solo guest or adds another awkward decision.
Keep the useful surprise. Remove the part that needs a speech to justify it.
Five questions before production
- Which customer difficulty does this address?
- What can a person do here that they could not do before?
- What must the business deliver for the promise to be true?
- How will we test whether people understand and want it?
- What evidence would make us simplify, change or stop?
An absurd angle should survive ordinary questions. That is when it becomes worth building.
Written by The Absurd Company.
Independent thinking, from Kingston to wherever you are.
