31247 Chap.13 Ideation, Evaluation Criteria and SAW Selection
Ideation, Evaluation Criteria and SAW Selection
Generating ideas deliberately
Week 9 gives techniques for producing ideas on purpose: SCAMPER’s seven prompts, analogous inspiration from other industries, and deconstructing an existing solution to rebuild it differently.
Related ideas can then be combined into a concept.
Choosing with evidence
Evaluation criteria such as effectiveness, viability and social uptake are weighted and used to score each idea with simple additive weighting.
The group report asks you to evaluate every idea and select two.
From two ideas to a proposal
The two ideas selected here become the solutions the report develops in Task 2, each with its features, scope and a causal loop diagram, before one is chosen as the final solution. Recording the scores and the weights makes that later choice easy to justify.
What this chapter covers
- 01
SCAMPER prompts
- 02
Analogous inspiration
- 03
Deconstruct and reconstruct
- 04
Turning ideas into concepts
- 05
Generic evaluation criteria
- 06
Improvement criteria, features and scope
- 07
Simple additive weighting and sensitivity
Worked example · free
Confirm the top two SAW scores for the food-bank ideas
- 1SMS reserve list: 0.5 × 7 + 0.3 × 9 + 0.2 × 6 = 3.5 + 2.7 + 1.2 = 7.4.
- 1Shift-swap app: 0.5 × 8 + 0.3 × 6 + 0.2 × 7 = 4.0 + 1.8 + 1.4 = 7.2.
- 1The app scores higher on the most heavily weighted criterion, effectiveness, by 0.5 points.
- 1The list gains 0.9 points on viability, which more than makes up the gap, so it ranks first by 0.2.
Key terms
- SCAMPER
- A set of seven ideation prompts: substitute, combine, adapt, modify, put to other uses, eliminate and reverse.
- Evaluation Criteria
- The yardsticks, such as effectiveness or viability, used to compare solution ideas.
- Solution Feature
- Something a solution does that produces the intended improvement.
- Concept
- Related ideas joined into one coherent whole that serves the deepest needs of the target user.
- Sensitivity Check
- Recomputing a ranking with different weights to see whether the choice changes.
Ideation, Evaluation Criteria and SAW Selection FAQ
How many ideas does the group report need?
The instructions ask for no fewer ideas than the team has members, each listed with a commentary and the name of the member who proposed it. The rubric’s top band looks for five relevant ideas, each supported by academic evidence.
How does simple additive weighting work?
Give each criterion a weight, with the weights adding to one, and rate each idea on each criterion on the same scale. Multiply each rating by its weight and add the results; the idea with the highest total ranks first.
What is the difference between improvement criteria and evaluation criteria?
Improvement criteria describe the change you want in the problem, such as fewer cancelled shifts. Evaluation criteria are used to choose between ideas, such as effectiveness or viability. A good report links the two, so ideas are judged partly on how much they move the improvement criteria.
Can the two selected solutions combine several ideas?
Yes. The instructions say the selected solutions may combine individual ideas, and the lecture describes a concept as related ideas joined into one coherent whole around the users’ deepest needs. Explain how each selected solution differs from existing ones.
What does SCAMPER stand for?
It is a set of seven ideation prompts from the Week 9 lecture: substitute, combine, adapt, modify or magnify or minify, put to other uses, eliminate, and reverse. Applying each prompt to an existing solution produces different ideas to evaluate.
Which evaluation criteria does the lecture suggest?
Effectiveness, viability, marketability or social uptake, concept clarity and competitiveness. The lecture calls these generic and asks you to make them specific to your own problem, and the rubric wants each criterion supported by academic evidence.
Assessment move
Run SCAMPER on one existing solution to your problem and write at least one idea per prompt, then add one idea from an unrelated industry. Agree five criteria with evidence for each, set the weights, and score every idea with simple additive weighting. Change one weight and recompute to see whether the top two hold. Ask Sia to check your arithmetic, not to choose for you.
Put the full scoring table in an appendix and refer to it from the body.
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