People with young children will know the perils of ice cream in a cone. Oh so delicious, but oh so sticky and messy. Not any more thanks to young Harry Dobbs, the 2013 YIA Internship Award winner, who spent a couple of weeks with the Locus Research and Woods Creative teams in early January working on his ideas to revolutionise the humble ice cream cone, which when you think about it, hasn't changed much for the last 40 years.

Harry and his project were picked from the 2013 Young Innovator Awards entries to win the 2013 YIA Internship. The Internship is provided by Locus Research and Woods, the Creative Agency. We open our doors and provide our time for free because we're so passionate about developing creativity and innovation. The internship gave Harry one week working with the Locus team on developing his product and one week working with the Woods team on marketing and branding for the product.

Harry's idea was an ice cream cone that stops the ice cream from dripping down the outside of the cone. He had noticed that this was a problem especially for small children.

We thought you might be interested in a quick run down of what Harry got up to  over the two weeks and where he got to with his project.

WEEK 1
As with all our projects, we started Harry off with a research phase. He looked at competing products: he stepped into the shoes of the customer and gained first hand experience at the process of buying and eating ice creams (yum!); he did some customer interviews with the different customer groups talking about their ice cream serving and eating experiences (shop owners, ice cream van vendors, adults ice cream eaters, child ice cream eaters); he did some observational research; and he also did some experimentation (we now know how long it takes for the average ice cream to melt on a summer's day).

Harry next took on the ideation phase. During this phase we had him brainstorming ideas for making the experience of eating ice cream from a cone better. He got to experience a group idea generation session and followed up with sketching the ideas and concepts. This led him to the design phase of the project. We had him fine tune his concepts, we developed a CAD model and 3D printed some cones. Finally, we trialed the product with some enthusiastic kids - it worked a treat, no more drips!

WEEK 2
To kick off the week with the Woods team, Harry once again started with a research phase. He looked at competing products, reviewing current ice cream and cone branding, as well as looking at food brands in general. This was followed by an ideation phase, brainstorming ideas about the desired product experience, and ideas for names that would evoke that experience. Harry learnt about what makes a good name before coming up with some ideas and sketches for branding concepts and key messages. To complete the project Harry worked on developing the brand logo and key messages and pulled it all together in a presentation to the teams from Woods, Locus, and Priority One.

At the end of the two weeks Harry has a working (although not edible) prototype of the cone.  He has the name, logo, potential website design and the marketing messages ready to go. We'll release more information about the cone soon so stay tuned - in the meantime check out some photos and a video from his time at Locus and Woods:

YIA 2013 Internship Award - Harry's Cone from Locus Research on Vimeo.