Dr. Alex Bruton is  on a mission to help people (learn to) innovate, which has taken him  from engineering to product development to entrepreneur to tenured  professor. 

Today he runs an open education and innovation design firm, The Innographer, where he helps people, organizations and institutions become more entrepreneurial and innovative.

The Really Big Idea Sketch Pad is a brainstorming tool that provides detailed questions for you to plan and elaborate on your idea. Used alongside the Really Big Critique Pad, this framework helps you focus on specific parameters of your ideas so that you can develop and refine them.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/04f2b4dd-0950-401a-a9d6-de75ad0ac7b1

Focus on specific parameters to develop and refine your idea.

Define the most important details to design for

Developing a future news story is an engaging way to build excitement for your idea by envisioning the possibilities of a world with your concept already in it. An idealized story is a unique way to explain the need or benefit of something by imagining the impact of its creation.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/61a4165a-0e96-421f-8f21-a7c55a09364c

Explain the need or benefit of something by imagining the impact of its creation.

Illustrate the main points of your new idea

The Persona Grid is used to create a representative portrait of your key stakeholders' mindset, needs and goals. This framework helps you gain insights about the different customers you encounter and how your product or service can address their needs and challenges.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/5f770d23-54d9-415b-9b55-e36b036dceb1

Create a portrait of your key stakeholders' mindset, needs and goals.

If you want to generate many wide-ranging ideas in a short amount of time, the Creative Matrix framework is useful because it stimulates cross-pollination and allows you to come up with new ideas at the intersection of two disparate categories.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/bf22a6ab-e9fb-449b-bce8-2576882f82c6

Generate many wide-ranging ideas at the intersection of multiple categories in a short amount of time.

Spark new ideas at the intersection of categories

An effective Concept Poster is a powerful way to promote an idea and rally support for its development.  Your poster should show what the idea is, why it matters, and how it works, because ultimately you want to influence people to embrace your concept by communicating what makes it an appropriate solution.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/393b343c-8562-49bc-8c41-fd761db8f3d2

A presentation format illustrating the main points of a new idea.

Illustrate the main points of a new idea in a presentation format

The Feedback Grid is a framework used to capture user insights about your product or service. With four quadrants to note your users' likes, wishes, questions and ideas, this framework helps you organize your feedback so that you improve your product or service according to customer needs.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/b7f49b2c-2f5d-409e-8f09-61ef00f7a03c

Capture user insights about your product or service.

Used to develop a deep, shared understanding and empathy for other people, an Empathy Map helps describe the aspects of a user's experience, needs and pain points. This framework allows you to quickly understand your users’ experience and mindset.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/8ecee3cb-9782-47dc-9f90-0d73e7fbe69c

Gain insights about your customers and how your business can address their needs.

A Roadmap is used to illustrate the features and value of a product in different stages of its development. This framework helps you understand a customer's experience at every stage of your product and lets you strategically plan its direction.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/b988c2ca-64a7-47d0-82ef-f21bea18159a

Understand your customers' experience at every stage and plan for future development.

Make better decisions in each stage of development

Abstraction Laddering provides a way of considering a given challenge statement at different levels of focus. When you are seeking more visionary solutions, it can help to step back and look at the issue more broadly.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/f150c74e-fa3d-4db8-a656-4849d8be60e8

Reconsider a problem statement by broadening or narrowing its focus.

Consider your challenge at different levels of focus

Round Robin allows for the generation of fresh ideas by providing a format for group authorship. As an idea is passed from person to person, it can grow and change in unexpected ways to uncover some wonderfully original concepts.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/8969d2db-21a2-43b7-9645-b0e91b0670ea

Grow and change an idea in unexpected ways by passing it from person to person.

Evolve your team’s ideas in unexpected ways

Dr. Alex Bruton  is on a mission to help people (learn to) innovate, which has taken him  from engineering to product development to entrepreneur to tenured  professor. 

Today he runs an open education and innovation design firm, The Innographer, where he helps people, organizations and institutions become more entrepreneurial and innovative.

The Really Big Idea Critique Pad is a feedback tool that helps you capture notes, insights and constructive critiques about your idea. Used alongside the Really Big Idea Sketch Pad, this framework helps you assess the feasibility and impact of your ideas among key stakeholders.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/1e194a32-1c95-4b3b-aa05-1baa5ce33b4d

Capture insights and constructive critiques about your idea.

The Idea Prioritization framework is an organizational tool that ranks an idea based on its feasibility and impact. This framework helps you visually compare the merits of multiple ideas.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/2cf57069-5e77-40da-b583-355982147843

Determine your best ideas by ranking their feasibility and impact.

Shortlist the best ideas to move forward with

The Scenario Map helps you consider your users, the tasks they will take on and the experience they will have given a specific situation. This framework helps you think about the steps your user will go through, as well as ideas, questions and information that can be useful to improving future designs.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/137dc9ed-65b4-4bb4-9e10-0aba0c366228

Design your project with clarity and flexibility.

Design for the context of your users’ situation

The Assumption Grid is a decision-making tool used to organize ideas based on their relative certainty and risk levels. This framework helps you consider your options and can help you choose the best decision given a problem.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/3d9ef029-a10f-42a2-b9be-8a941ca58d10

Make better decisions by organizing your ideas based on risk and certainty.

Understand the best options to move forward with

The Super Hunch Sketch Pad is used to develop a hunch into an idea that  is both feasible and impactful. With this framework, describe five  fundamental components about your hunch, gain feedback on it and develop  your idea into a "Super Hunch".

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/3d26b93d-02ab-4a15-9c48-54ce0e5d5edc

Develop a hunch into a feasible and impactful idea.

Determine the impact and feasibility of your idea

A simple 2x2 matrix can be a powerful instrument for establishing priorities. Specifically, placing Importance on the x-axis and Difficulty on the y-axis equips you to work out tensions between these opposing forces. When you plot items according to both priorities, you and your team will likely arrive at a workable resolution.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/5da9088c-f383-4c5d-96e7-9688a3376209

Plot items according to priorities to arrive at a workable resolution.

Establish the importance of your priorities

Scenario mapping helps you create to-be scenarios with confidence and understand the experiences that your personas have as they traverse through activities.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/d0c52fe6-23a0-49ef-9914-ebc816378be0

Ensure your design is grounded in the context of your user's real world situations.

Alex is a seasoned strategic designer, prototyper and facilitator working with the biggest companies and design agencies. 


He’s helped thousands of facilitators and leaders across the world align their teams for better performance with The Team Canvas.

Perfect for building teamwork, the  Team Canvas offers a tool to help achieve team alignment and goal  clarity. This framework helps teams structure meetings, resolve  frictions and conflicts and helps build a productive culture.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/fbef62f1-b4d2-4bcb-9338-f3b3efbb932c

Align your team, resolve conflicts and start building a productive culture.

Our Retrospective framework is an online tool where you an your team can collaborate in real time to reflect on what happened in the most recent work iteration and identify actions for improvement going forward. No matter where your team is located, this tool helps you analyze the benefits and drawbacks of your current action as well as develop a more effective strategy.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/03d1c0f9-8756-438c-a3c9-7d807095e327

Reflect on your current way of working, analyze your actions and develop a more effective strategy.

Assessing Stories helps you understand how your stakeholders would react in a given scenario. With this framework, you can learn about your stakeholders' unique mindsets and make decisions with their best interests in mind.

https://app.mural.co/template/a7980a86-faa5-4c6c-944c-148d8792ae2b/73b37084-f0b4-45b6-afb0-08d59cbb9de5

Understand how stakeholders react throughout each step of their journey.

Design for the context of your stakeholder

Tenny is a pioneer worldwide in designing bridges to integrate Agile Entrepreneurship and Service Design. 

With The Service Startup,  he helps entrepreneurs and business leaders take a lean approach to  create sustainable, desirable and profitable new services via service  design sprints.

The Hero Profile is a profile summary used to understand an extreme user. Used to record information and details, this framework helps you learn about your extreme user's mindset and gain insights about their struggles.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/2a4a5c8f-134d-4268-96f4-e01b0c53ee48

Learn about your extreme user's mindset and gain insights about their struggles.

Taiichi Ohno,  former Executive Vice President of Toyota Motor Company, developed the  Kanban System to eradicate inefficiency and eliminate waste in  production processes. His workplace management philosophies have become  institutionalized in the most successful manufacturing processes around  the world today.

The 5 Whys framework is a simple tool used to determine the causal  relationship of a problem. By repeating the question "Why?", you can  uncover the root cause of a problem.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/0ca61ecc-8186-4075-a02d-daadb833d9dc

Storyboarding is an ideal way to visualize people experiencing your new idea in action. Since storyboards are built using images—a common language that all involved can understand— they can help teams communicate ideas more clearly and evocatively than words alone.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/be58ac4a-ea1d-43df-ab71-6e6d84b0c280

Visualize people experiencing your new idea in action to communicate more clearly than words alone.

Visualize key interactions of new scenarios

XPLANE is a global consulting  partner that helps large organizations transform their business. They  leverage visual thinking, design facilitation, co-creation, and  people-centered design to help clients solve complex problems and  accelerate immediate and lasting results.

Used to develop a deep, shared understanding and empathy for other  people, an Empathy Map is a tool that helps describe aspects of a user's  experience, needs and pain points. This framework allows you to quickly  understand your users’ experience and mindset.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/f1b5b545-a6d1-46e0-9cdc-797e77755d5a

Develop a deep, shared understanding and empathy for your customers.

Ruud Janssen and Roel Frissen are innovators and game changers in the Hospitality and Meetings & Events Industry.

Together they’ve co-founded Event Design Collective (the event design consulting & training firm), aimed at creating a common language for Meetings & Events.

The Event Model Canvas is used to  design better and more effective events in less time. This framework  helps you describe your event's purpose and value to stakeholders and  outlines the expected costs and benefits, such as customer behavior  changes, for having the event.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/c1ea3fe8-abc5-49d8-b65b-dd5814740cad

Design better and more effective events in less time.

This framework provides a place where people can organize items within a given scope based on how important or relevant they consider them to be. So, whether you are dealing with concrete items or abstract concepts, this framework is a useful way for people to assign rank.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/09e392e0-a5b7-4d98-b0bc-200ac9ac4ebc

Organize items based on importance and relevance

By design, a Bull’s-Eye Diagram puts a limit on how much you can identify as critical, thus forcing your team to deliberate about essentials before producing anything. Since each successive circle is larger than the bull’s-eye, you must carefully consider what’s critical, what’s important and what’s merely peripheral.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/225e0c0a-01c6-49ed-83b9-462e72cd6c80

Rank items in order of importance using a target diagram.

Carefully consider ideas in order of importance

The Minimum Valuable Service framework is used to document all the intentions the user expresses when using a service. This tool helps you gain insights about what users want to accomplish and how they want to do it.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/253de920-b67e-438a-92a1-ec1b3d9b44c8

Gain a deeper understanding about your users' insights and what they want to accomplish.

MethodKit  has collected the most important bits and pieces from design principles  to get you started and further develop ideas in meetings and workshops.  The tools are designed to help teams develop ideas, get an overview and  work together - to organize, prioritize, and discuss.

The Workshop Planning canvas is used to define core aspects of your  event. By focusing on the context and purpose of your workshop, this  framework will help maximize the effectiveness of your session to ensure  that it will run smoothly. 

Learn more about the MethodKit for Workshop Planning, including details on using the template, in this MURAL support article.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/d65b35ba-77da-4e20-8b6c-cae6b8fbe761

Focus on the context and purpose of your workshop to maximize effectiveness.

Personas can serve as a powerful way to make your data meaningful. The best Persona Profiles can help your team remember and discuss the people for whom you are designing. As a reference for generating ideas, prioritizing features, or discussing trade-off decisions, personas are a valuable tool for decision making.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/908b41d5-19ef-4ec8-a4e8-b23451d9513e

Remember and discuss the people for whom you are designing.

Summarize the mindset, needs and goals of your users

Jim Kalbach  has been a design leader at global companies throughout his career, as  well as a noted author, speaker, and instructor in UX design,  information architecture and strategy. 

Jim’s latest book, Mapping Experiences, shows how to visually map experiences to turn observations into actionable insights and envision future solutions.

The Strategy Blueprint is a brainstorming tool used to analyze six core  elements in your strategy. This framework allows you to address your  challenges by exploring your options, trying alternatives, developing  ideas and reaching a desired outcome. 

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/fe0cad88-8789-456e-9a36-419284d2436b

Visualize the central logic of your strategy, overcome challenges and reach your desired position.

Jeff Gothelf has  worked for 20+ years as a designer, team leader, author and coach. His  work today mainly focuses on building and training evidence-based,  customer-centered executive & product teams. These teams often  utilize lean and agile principles which are detailed in his books Lean UX and Sense & Respond.

The Lean UX Canvas helps teams frame their work as a business problem to  solve (rather than a solution to implement). By dissecting that  business problem into its core assumptions, you can develop hypotheses  to design experiments around and test.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/c87f7c79-6674-440e-a7d0-c7e0c9fed751

Solve your most complicated business problems.

Solve your most complicated business problems

TrendWatching  helps forward-thinking businesses understand the new customer and  unlock compelling, profitable innovation opportunities. They discover  trends happening in local global markets and apply that knowledge to be  used by companies in their own space.

The Consumer Trends Canvas helps you gather and analyze insights about  consumer trends and transform them into innovation and business  opportunities. By noting trends on this framework, you can figure out  the best way to leverage them into your consumer-facing business  products and services.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/0fb7af51-d69d-4635-b156-25970d97c754

Gather and analyze insights about consumer trends and transform them into business opportunities.

Ela Ben-Ur  believes that innovation is fundamentally about human experiences. Her  design practice and leadership spans creative confidences across diverse  industries, geographies and sectors.


She designed the Innovators’ Compass to help people articulate and amplify their natural ways of innovating.

The Innovators’ Compass is a simple and convenient tool used to tackle  everyday challenges. By mapping out your observations, principles and  ideas, you can address problems and make a plan of action within four  steps. 

Learn more about the power of the Innovators’ Compass,  including details on using the framework, in this blog post by Ela  Ben-Ur

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/350f2202-08f6-4f74-b7cf-897d9b38bf7c

A visual workspace to find new possibilities and unlock your potential in any situation.

The Risk Wall is used to organize ideas to help determine the best way to move forward based on their impact and probability of success.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/0de58eaa-df1f-4cbe-87f2-953314c2bb6a

Determine which ideas have the highest probability of success.

The Wall of Work is used to communicate the stages of your project within your team. This framework tracks the progress of your work and helps your team focus on current goals while being able to see the state of all work at anytime.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/ddd997f8-e8df-4038-b78f-b1e67f841ae5

Track the progress of your work and focus on your current goals.

The Hero Quest describes a representative journey that your extreme user encounters when using your service. This framework helps you understand the interactions, intentions and perceptions of your users.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/ae2bac69-2b85-4cf9-a081-634d65e4e8f3

Understand the interactions, intentions and perceptions of your users when they interact in your service.

The Time Machine is used to gain a deeper understanding about the  environment your business is working in. This framework helps you learn  how your stakeholders navigate through your service.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/9f6dda63-7b08-4bf3-bd9e-39f03592b965

Gain a deeper understanding about the environment your business is working in.

Managing Stakeholder Expectations helps you understand and manage stakeholders' needs in order to design an effective communication plan that addresses each of their unique situations.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/577eaa94-8c13-408b-8b9e-168e6649838c

Devise the most efficient management plan for each stakeholder.

Communicate successfully with stakeholders

Ash Maurya works to create better, faster ways for building successful products. 

He started to apply and test his findings, which went into a blog, then  into a book, and finally into a series of products with his company LeanStack - aimed at helping entrpreneurs raise their odds of success.

The Lean Canvas is a template that focuses entirely on the entrepreneur  to help develop strategic business models quickly and concisely. A  problem-solution oriented approach, it helps you focus on elements, such  key metrics and competitive advantages, to address a problem.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/76c2917e-ef21-46d2-b523-837b732a6b38

Develop strategic business models quickly and concisely by focusing on competitive advantages.

Strategyzer aims to put practical tools into the hands of every business strategy practitioner. They’ve assembled an amazing team of creative, technical, and business professionals from around the world to build products and create experiences that benefit individuals, organizations, and society.

The Business Model Canvas is a strategic management tool that helps businesses align their goals to their activities. As a visual chart, it helps you plan, describe and develop your business' value proposition, infrastructure, customers and finances.

https://app.mural.co/t/murally-org/template/7f61d80b-93c6-4699-ae8b-c9e36da998f4

Visualize new ways for your business to create, deliver and capture value.

Visualize your business goals and activities

Frameworks from MURAL

Really Big Idea Sketch Pad

Persona Grid

Feedback Grid

Empathy Map 2

Roadmap

Really Big Idea Critique Pad

Idea Prioritization

Hills

Assumption Grid

Super Hunch Sketch Pad

Scenario Map

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