Analogous Inspiration
Analogous Inspiration is a design-research technique from IDEO and IDEO.org in which a team looks for inspiration outside its own field. The team isolates the activities, behaviours and emotions at the heart of its challenge, identifies unrelated settings where the same things occur, and goes to observe them. It has two parts: a planning session of 30 to 60 minutes that a facilitator runs with the team, and the visits themselves, which are field research and take additional time.
Facilitation script
- 1
Restate the design challenge and explain the idea: find places outside the field where the same activities, behaviours or emotions occur, and go and look.
5 min - 2
List the activities, behaviours and emotions that sit at the heart of the challenge on a large sheet. Aim for six to ten, phrased as verbs or feelings.
10 min - 3
For each item, brainstorm settings where it also occurs. Push the group beyond neighbouring industries.
15 min - 4
Discuss which settings are most promising and reachable, then vote on two to four to visit.
10 min - 5
Plan the visits: who has a contact, who goes where, what each visit should look for, and when the team meets to debrief.
10 min
Tips
Phrase the items in the first list as verbs and feelings, not as features of your own service, or the group will only think of competitors.
Pick settings that are good at the thing you struggle with: a team working on handovers learns more from a place where handovers cannot fail than from an average one.
Brief everyone before the visit on what to watch for, and hold the debrief within a day or two while details are fresh.
Common pitfalls
Choosing settings that are too close to home, such as another company in the same sector, so the visits confirm what the team already knows
Listing features of the current product in the first step instead of underlying activities and emotions, which makes it impossible to find parallels elsewhere
Visiting without a focus: the team comes back with pleasant impressions and photos and nothing it can connect to the challenge
Skipping the debrief, so each visitor keeps private impressions and the observations never become shared principles or ideas
Turning up unannounced or photographing people without permission, which damages the relationship with the host and can breach privacy rules
Variations
No time for visits: invite someone who works in the analogous setting for a 30-minute interview, or study photos and published accounts, accepting that second-hand material shows less than observation. Remote: run the planning session on a shared whiteboard and split the visits among team members by location. Larger teams: split into pairs, send each pair to a different setting, and let each pair present three observations at the debrief. The method combines well with interviews in the team's own field, which show the problem, while analogous settings show how others have solved something similar.
Where it fits
When to use it
Every idea the team produces resembles what competitors already do, and it needs reference points from elsewhere
The team's own setting is hard to observe, for example because of privacy or safety rules, but the same behaviour occurs somewhere more accessible
The challenge comes down to a general human activity such as waiting, queuing, handing over or reassuring someone
You are in the research phase of a design project and have time for at least one or two visits before ideation
A team of specialists is convinced its field is unique and would benefit from seeing its problem solved in a different context
When not to use it
The team does not yet understand its own users: run User Interviews and observation in its own setting first, otherwise it cannot tell which analogies are relevant
There is no time or budget to visit anything or talk to anyone outside: a desk-based technique such as SCAMPER will produce new angles faster
The problem is a technical fault with a specific cause: use root-cause analysis instead of looking for inspiration
The team expects to copy a solution wholesale: analogies give principles to adapt, and practices lifted without their context tend to fail
Related methods
Frequently asked questions
What is Analogous Inspiration?▾
Analogous Inspiration is a design-research method in which a team studies settings outside its own field that share a key activity, behaviour or emotion with its challenge. The team identifies those settings in a short planning session, visits and observes them, and brings back principles it can apply. It is described in IDEO.org's Design Kit.
What is an example of an analogous setting?▾
The setting depends on the activity you isolate. A team working on fast, error-free handovers between shifts might observe how a relay team or a restaurant kitchen passes work on. A team designing a calmer waiting experience might visit a place that manages queues well. The setting does not need to resemble yours; it needs to share the specific activity you want to learn about.
How long does Analogous Inspiration take?▾
The planning session takes 30 to 60 minutes. The visits are extra and depend on access: allow an hour or two per setting plus travel, and a further debrief session of about an hour. In total the method usually spreads over one to two weeks of a research phase.
How do you choose which settings to visit?▾
Favour settings that handle the activity especially well or under more pressure than you face, because extremes make the underlying practices visible. Then filter for access: a setting where someone on the team has a contact is worth more than a perfect one nobody can enter. Two to four visits are enough for most projects.
How do you turn the observations into ideas?▾
In the debrief, have each visitor describe what they saw and why they think it works in that setting. Extract the principle behind each observation, for example "the receiving person repeats the instruction back", and then ask what that principle would look like in your own context. Those translated principles become input for ideation.
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Try it freeMethod descriptions on Workshop Weaver are original content written by our team, based on established facilitation practices. This method was inspired by work from IDEO.org (Design Kit).