Bringing Ideas to Life with Concept Arcs

Do you have an idea that you want to bring to life, but are having trouble starting?

For years, I scribbled out dozens of ideas in notebooks and apps, but could not decipher the steps required to bring any of them to life. As a result, the businesses that I am currently building laid dormant longer than they should have.

When I began teaching design, I found that, like me, majority of my students had ideas that they wanted to turn into viable businesses. In teaching them how to articulate and prototype those ideas for class, I also ended up teaching them how to turn ideas into products that they could sell — and founded the roots of this series of courses, Bringing Ideas to Life.

The first installment of the series, Concept Arcs, is about getting ideas out of your head in a robust, structured format that helps you share an idea in a format that others can understand. Concept Arcs are not about building product pitches, though they might appear as a segment of one. Concept Arcs are the first step toward making your intangible idea more real than not.

In Bringing Ideas to Life with Concept Arcs, you will leverage the power of strategic design to materialize ideas systematically, setting the foundation for subsequent in prototyping, evaluating, and shipping customer-ready products and services.

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syllabus

  • FOCUS

    Getting to know your instructor and preparing tools to get started.

  • FOCUS

    Using the art of observation to identify and communicate the phenomena that serve as the roots of your idea.

    DRIVING QUESTION

    What are the phenomena that gave rise to the idea?

    LESSONS

    1. How to make an observation.

    2. Identifying and communicating phenomena.

  • FOCUS

    Placing the underlying phenomena in context to show the importance of the phenomena and your unique perspective on it.

    DRIVING QUESTIONS

    Why is the observation and its context interesting, unique, or important? Why do you care, and why should anyone else?

    LESSONS

    1. Grounding the idea in human experience.

    2. Articulating and visualizing relevant contexts and systems.

  • FOCUS

    Specifying the problem that your idea addresses, and how desperately we need to address it.

    DRIVING QUESTIONS

    Because of this phenomenon and its context, what opportunity do you see for change? What is at stake if we do not make a change?

    LESSONS

    1. Verbalizing the problem.

    2. Visualizing the problem.

  • FOCUS

    Seduce your audience with the difference that you seek to make in the world.

    DRIVING QUESTIONS

    If the problem you identified were addressed, how would the world be different? What are the effects of your idea when it is fully realized?

    LESSONS

    1. Verbalizing the difference.

    2. Visualizing the difference.

  • FOCUS

    Introduce the product or service that you will use to achieve that difference.

    DRIVING QUESTION

    How does your idea achieve the vision for change that you have presented?

    LESSONS

    1. Describing the product or service.

    2. Visualizing the product or service in action.

  • FOCUS

    Plan your progress by identifying the upcoming three steps in your idea development.

    DRIVING QUESTIONS

    What are the next three things you need to do to move forward? What support do you need? What blockers are hindering progress? How will you address those?

    LESSONS

    1. Creating an action plan.

    2. Identifying and Mitigating Risks.

    3. Finalizing your Concept Arc.

Introducing your design coach

Meet the expert leading the entrepreneurship design revolution!

Regena Paloma Reyes focuses on human-centered design, breaking down and reshaping opportunities to create better services, systems, and experiences using research with real people. She works with teams and individuals to craft products, services, and businesses that usher in equitable futures for all.

While Regena is an expert at design innovation for corporate entities, she is passionate about helping everyday people use design to build businesses let them buy back their time, while building something they love.

Regena teaches graduate and undergraduate students in Strategic Design at the Parsons School of Design and has worked as an Experience Consultant at Proto, an AI Enablement Consultant at KPMG, and a Cognitive and Analytics Consultant at IBM. She holds a BS in Finance from Carnegie Mellon University and an MFA in Products of Design from the School of Visual Arts.

Details

  • Bringing Ideas to Life with Concept Arcs is a $479 investment. Upon registration, payments can be made in full or in installments via Klarna or Afterpay.

  • Bringing Ideas to Life with Concept Arcs is a 6-week course, with two chapters dropped weekly.

    The first lesson drops on October 1, 2025.

    Participants may enroll in this course until October 8, 2025. Any enrollments after this date will be placed on a wait list and admitted for the next iteration of this course.

  • Upon completing Bringing Ideas to Life with Concept Arcs, participants will walk away with the first draft of an idea and the roots of a pitch deck.

    Participants will master a systematic process for getting ideas out of their heads and into a format that others can react to. Furthermore, they will develop the confidence to share their ideas with those who are best able to help move the idea forward — customers, testers, investors, and future business partners.

  • Bringing Ideas to Life with Concept Arcs is a self-paced, weekly course. We recommend that students be able to invest 6 - 10 hours per week to viewing video lectures and completing course assignments designed to propel you toward the next iteration of and idea and a business that matters to you.

  • Accessing course materials will require an updated web browser and reliable internet connection.

    Tools required to complete assignments include:

    • A presentation software like Google Slides, Keynote, Powerpoint, etc.

    • Pen and paper

    • PDF Reader

    Any lesson-specific tools will be specified in the respective video lecture and lesson materials.