Ideation as a Process

Ideation sessions help you to challenge assumptions, think outside the box, and explore new ways of approaching long-standing problems.

Most industries, societies, and organizations have a set of deeply-held, unspoken beliefs that everyone follows when it comes to “how we do things around here.” However, Elinor Ostrom, one of only two women to have won the Nobel Prize for economics, wrote about the danger of relying too much on “self-evident truths” when developing policies and processes to solve social challenges.

Ideation is process concentrated on idea generation meant to create a broad set of ideas to address a specific challenge.

During ideation, you work with many different people (either one-on-one or in groups) to explore and come up with as many ideas as possible. A few of the ideas might become potential solutions to your design challenge, while most will end up on the reject pile.

The process is relatively simple, but can be reinvented an infinite number of ways: Select How Might We Question (Design Challenge) >>> Activity to Generate Ideas >>> Cluster and Categorize Possible Solutions.

Ideation is a process that should produce quantity of ideas rather than quality. For the sake of innovation and creativity, it is essential that the ideation phase be a “judgement-free zone”.

After going through an ideation session, it is important to cluster and group the most-preferred solutions. These will provide the fuel and the source material for building prototypes and putting solutions into the hands of your end users.

Ideation Inspiration & Techniques

Use these readings, videos, and other resources to learn more about ideation as a technique generating many ideas to address a particular challenge.

Strategies & Tips for Success

Make your ideation efforts more effective by keeping these strategies and tips in mind:

IDEO’s Design Kit provides some ground rules for ideation and brainstorming:

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.

Start off by framing your challenge as a solutions-focused How Might We question. How might we [improve] a [specific aspect] of [specific challenge]?

Create an environment where all participants embrace wild ideas and misunderstanding.

Use two or three of these suggested ideation activities to build a list of ideas

• Generate 20 to 30 assumptions, true or false, that you may be making about the HMW question. What ideas emerge from these assumptions?

• Generate 20 to 30 wishes about your HMW question.

• Ask participants to create a list of bad, terrible, illegal or gross ideas to solve the HMW question. Once you’ve generated a list, challenge the group to turn those horrible ideas into good ones by either considering its opposite or by finding the ‘silver lining.’

• Ask participants to create an email newsletter cover story, including main image, headline, quotes, and sidebars with associated facts.

• Ask participants to write down their ideas on sticky notes and pass on their post-its other participants. After reviewing the new ideas, participants should write down any new ideas they have, or extensions of the ideas that were shared with them.

Practical Activities & Learning

1) Review your outputs from “Immersion & Observation” and “Semi-Structured Interviews.”

2) Use your ‘end user problem’ and ‘how might we’ question to determine an effective approach to ideation.

3) Implement and ideation session or ideation period to generate multiple ideas to address a specific aspect of your end user problem. Consult with at least 10-15 people associated with the following groups.

In the Field

As a neighborhood consultant, you can submit up to 3 ideation worksheets from sessions held with key end user groups. Notes and other outputs must be shared and summarized to enhance our learning.

Ideation Field Journal Worksheets available on request from aaron[at]akroadvice.com