Ideation

To Brainstorm on your challenge: Get a group of people (three to five) and lead an ideation session. You might do this with co-workers, students, and/or others. You should take about an hour with your session.It’s important to diverge (go in as many directions as possible) for as long as possible. Be sure to exercise those creative muscles.

You will need:

• Whiteboard or empty wall
• Sticky note pad for each participant
• Sharpie or pen for each participant

Brainstorming is best done in a comfortable location with a whiteboard or wall for sticky notes. Write the challenge up on the wall for everyone to see. Everyone should have a sticky pad and a pen. Some people do best by writing down their ideas quietly and then posting them to the wall. Others will say their ideas out loud. It is important to use encouraging language to comment on ideas with phrases such as “yes, and” (instead of “no, but”). Brainstorming is often compared to improv where similar language is used.

This article describes the simple, three-step brainstorming process Google uses to come up with its most innovative ideas and shows a short video of a brainstorming session at Google.

https://www.fastcompany.com/3061059/your-most-productive-self/how-to-brainstorm-like-a-googler

Before you begin, write your three insights from the interview or the Whys from your observation session.

IDEO Brainstorming Rules

1. Defer judgement. You never know where a good idea is going to come from. The key is make everyone feel like they can say the idea on their mind and allow others to build on it.
2. Encourage wild ideas. Wild ideas can often give rise to creative leaps. In thinking about ideas that are wacky or out there we tend to think about what we really want without the constraints of technology or materials.
3. Build on the ideas of others. Being positive and building on the ideas of others take some skill. In conversation, we try to use “and” instead of “but.”
4. Stay focused on the topic. Try to keep the discussion on target, otherwise you can diverge beyond the scope of what you’re trying to design for.
5. One conversation at a time. Your team is far more likely to build on an idea and make a creative leap if everyone is paying full attention to whoever is sharing a new idea.
6. Be visual. In live brainstorms we write down on Post-its and then put them on a wall. Nothing gets an idea across faster than drawing it. Doesn’t matter if you’re not Rembrandt!
7. Go for quantity. Aim for as many new ideas as possible. In a good session, up to 100 ideas are generated in 60 minutes. Crank the ideas out quickly and build on the best ones.

Brainwriting is an alternative method to brainstorming that tries to encourage a more uniform participation within a group. Like brainstorming, it is designed to generate lots and lots of ideas in a short amount of time. If you are on your own, you can begin the brainwriting exercise and get others to add on or add on to your own ideas over the course of a day.

Steps for a Brainwriting session:

1. Participants sit around a table and each one gets a sheet of paper with the same problem statement written at the top. Just like in traditional brainstorming, you also need a moderator for the session.
2. At the moderator’s signal, each participant has 3 minutes to write down 3 ideas on the sheet of paper. Just like in traditional brainstorming, the ideas should always go unedited. The difference is that now they are being recorded in private. The number of ideas and duration can vary, but I found that “three ideas every three minutes” works particularly well.
3. When time is up (or when everybody’s done), each participant passes the sheet of paper to the participant to the left.
4. Each participant now reads the ideas that were previously written and a new three-minute round starts. Each participant must again come up with three new ideas. Participants are free to use the ideas already on the sheet as triggers — or to ignore them altogether.
5. Lather, rinse, repeat. The group can agree to stop after a fixed number of rounds (such as when sheets come to a full turn around the table) or when participants feel that contributions are exhausted.
6. After the idea-gathering phase is completed, the ideas are read, discussed and consolidated with the help of the moderator, just like in traditional brainstorming.

Brainwriting Example

For individuals not working in a team: You can complete this activity asynchronously and without the time limit by asking coworkers to add their ideas to your brainwriting sheet.