51: The Death of an Idea
Ideacraft, part 4
The Jeopardy Test
How do you know if an idea is working?
The tv gameshow Jeopardy! is a quiz competition that reverses the traditional question-and-answer format of many quiz shows. Rather than being given questions, contestants are instead given general knowledge clues in the form of answers and they must identify the person, place, thing, or idea that the clue describes, phrasing each response in the form of a question.
Illustration and design are often thought of as visual answers to written questions. If your idea is intened as the aswer to a question or the solution to a problem, show it to someone without an explanation. If they can guess what the original question was, your idea is working. If they cannot, then it’s one of two things:
1. Your idea isn’t working. (concept)
2. Your execution of the idea isn’t working. (skill)
If it isn’t working, revisit, reiterate or discard and start again.Â
Iterations are a fundamental step in the ideation process. You’ll never arrive at great solutions without putting in the work.
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