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Making Ambiguous Ideas Tangible

Ambiguous ideas create misalignment. I use design to give them enough form that teams can see the same thing, discuss the tradeoffs, and decide what to do next.

Three colleagues each picture a different building from the same idea: a mid-rise, a house, a skyscraper. A designer then shows all three a single blueprint.

At Salesforce, I created Idea Dash to do this:

Idea Dash: a design-led method for turning an ambiguous product idea into something a group can evaluate together.

Day In the Life

The Challenge

  • Executives were excited by high-level product ideas, but the true customer experience and value proposition were still too ambiguous to evaluate.
  • Teams lacked a fast way to make those ideas tangible enough to understand, compare, and discuss together.
  • Without clarity, roadmap decisions risked funding weak ideas and crowding out stronger ones.
One person describes a mid-rise building while the two listening picture a house and a skyscraper.

The Approach

Each Idea Dash gave a high-level product idea three weeks to become concrete enough for an informed Go or Stop decision.

Two designers worked with advisors from product management and engineering, backed by an executive sponsor. Week one was immersion and research into the brief. Week two moved sketches into wireframes. Week three produced a prototype and the presentation that ended in the decision.

The process had to be fast, repeatable, and cheap enough to run on an idea that might not survive it. Each sprint produced shared artifacts everyone evaluated together, rather than a document each person interpreted separately.

Walking away was an acceptable outcome, not a failure. Stop counted as a successful result when the work showed an idea was not ready, not clear, or not worth deeper investment.

Timeline

Three-week sprint timeline: week one immersion and research into a design brief, week two sketches into a wireframe, week three prototype and document into the final presentation

Paired Designers with Stakeholder Advisors

Two paired designers presenting concept artifacts

Ending with Executive Review & Discussion

A designer presenting a concept to the executive team

Example from First Idea Dash

Idea Dash sketch

Idea Dash forecast concept sketch

Shipped Feature: Pipeline Inspection

Pipeline Inspection

The product team took it from there, and what shipped as Pipeline Inspection is not a copy of the sketch. That was never the measure. What mattered was that the decision to move forward could be made with confidence, and that the team could start building right away.

The Outcome

50% faster

From leadership approval to the start of product development.

40% increase

In new features that met or exceeded goals.

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