(Illustrated above) An architect uses tools in an airplane design application to create highly sculptural forms, which she then imports into her building modeling application to use as elements in an experimental building proposal.

A scientist searched extensively to find a data visualization tool for an ongoing, highly specific analysis need. Her clinical research lab now routinely uses a single interactive graph from an analysis tool that is normally only used by environmental engineers, not clinical researchers.

A financial trader uses an instant messaging function, which was specifically designed as a method for rapidly booking deals with outside firms, to quickly distribute excess work to fellow traders in his group during peak intervals of activity.

Are the professionals that your team is targeting known for deliberately using their tools in innovative ways, or do they seem more likely to adopt technologies as they were intended to be applied?

What technologies have targeted individuals and organizations appropriated in novel ways in the past? What might your team learn about your audience from these stories?

What larger design and technology trends could influence your ideas about unexpected scenarios of use?

What thought experiments might your team conduct to uncover potential unanticipated uses of your application concepts — while your product is still just abstract models and sketches?

What inventive usages might targeted knowledge workers predict?

What important variabilities in working methods might your team have overlooked when rationalizing work practice for design purposes?

What other, laterally related domains and occupations might reach out to some or all of the functionality in your application concepts?

Of the potential “not as designed” uses that your team has identified, which would be inconsistent with your own goals and morals? Which would clearly not fit the envisioned design strategy or brand of your application concepts?

How might your team “design out” certain usage scenarios that you do not want to promote or enable?

What plans might you establish for gathering information on novel uses of your product in its eventual user base? For working with innovative “lead users” to translate their related ideas and creations into valuable elements of your computing tool?

Do you have enough information to usefully answer these and other envisioning questions? What additional research, problem space models, and design concepting could valuably inform your team’s application envisioning efforts?