Worked example

SCAMPER Tool for Design Students

SCAMPER is a checklist of seven prompts for improving or reinventing an idea. This page shows each prompt applied to a single everyday product, so you can see what a useful answer looks like.

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The product

A school water bottle

A plain plastic bottle with a screw lid. Students carry one every day, and most have a complaint about it: it rolls around in the bag, the lid goes missing, and the inside is hard to clean. That makes it a good product to practise on.

The seven prompts, one answer each

Work through the letters in order. Each answer says what changes and why it helps.

  1. Substitute

    What part or material could you swap for something else?

    Swap the hard plastic body for soft silicone, so the bottle can be squeezed flat when it is empty.

  2. Combine

    What could you join it with?

    Join the lid with a small snack pot, so a drink and a snack travel as one object.

  3. Adapt

    What idea from another product could you borrow?

    Borrow the clip from a climbing carabiner, so the bottle hangs on the outside of a bag.

  4. Modify

    What could you make bigger, smaller or a different shape?

    Make the bottle flat and rectangular, so it slides in beside books and does not roll around.

  5. Put to another use

    Who else could use it, or what else could it do?

    Print a measuring scale on the side, so it also works as a measuring jug in a food technology lesson.

  6. Eliminate

    What could you take away?

    Remove the separate lid and use a spout that twists shut, so there is no lid to lose.

  7. Reverse

    What could you turn around or do in the opposite order?

    Put the opening at the base as well, so the bottle comes apart at both ends and is easy to clean inside.

What a useful answer looks like

Every answer above has two parts: the change and the reason. “Make it flat” is only half an answer. “Make it flat, so it slides in beside books” can be sketched and tested. If you cannot finish the sentence with “so…”, the idea is not ready yet.

How to pick the most promising idea

Seven prompts give you seven ideas, and you cannot make them all. Check each one against three questions:

  1. Does it fix a real problem for the user? The flat bottle fixes rolling around. The measuring scale is clever, but nobody asked for it.
  2. Can you make it with the time, tools and materials you have? A bottle that opens at both ends needs a second watertight seal, which is hard to make. A flat shape can be modelled in card this week.
  3. Is it different from what already exists? If shops already sell it, look for what you could do better.

Keep the two ideas that do best, sketch them both, and show them to someone who would use the product. Here that would be the flat bottle and the twist spout, and they could even be joined into one design.

Now try your own

The SCAMPER tool has the same layout as this example, empty and ready to fill in. It is free and needs no login.

Open the SCAMPER tool →

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