Instead of using a boardroom with the CEO sitting at the head of the table, Design Thinking and Ideation sessions require a space in which everyone is equal. In Ideation sessions, it’s important to create the right type of environment to help create a creative work culture with a curious, courageous, and concentrated atmosphere. Ideation is a creative and concentrated process those involved should be provided with an environment that facilitates free, open, and the non-judgemental sharing of ideas. People need guidance, inspiration and activities, in a physical and cognitive manner, in order to get the process started. Likewise, to have everyone shout out their own ideas is likely to result in failure. To sit the team down with a blank piece of paper and ask them to come up with ideas will likely result in failure. However, Ideation sessions can indeed be fun and exciting, but they demand a lot of preparation and team member concentration in order to be fruitful. Here you’ll get brief overview of some of the best methods:Īlthough many of us may have previously participated in a Brainstorm session, it is not always easy to facilitate a truly fruitful ideation session, which may be the reason why many of us have had negative experiences in the past. Some methods are merely renamed or slightly adapted versions of more foundational techniques. Ideation Methods to Spark Innovative Ideas Get obvious solutions out of your heads, and drive your team beyond them.Create volume and variety in your innovation options.
By expanding the solution space, the design team will be able to look beyond the usual methods of solving problems in order to find better, more elegant, and satisfying solutions to problems that affect a user's experience of a product.Īuthor/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. The main aim of the Ideation stage is to use creativity and innovation in order to develop solutions. – d.school, An Introduction to Design Thinking PROCESS GUIDE Ideation provides both the fuel and also the source material for building prototypes and getting innovative solutions into the hands of your users.” Mentally it represents a process of “going wide” in terms of concepts and outcomes. “Ideation is the mode of the design process in which you concentrate on idea generation. The goal is to generate a large number of ideas - ideas that potentially inspire newer, better ideas - that the team can then cut down into the best, most practical and innovative ones. When facilitated in a successful way, Ideation is an exciting process. In this article, we’ll introduce you to some of the best Ideation methods and guidelines that help facilitate successful Ideation sessions and encourage active participation from members. In the Ideation stage, design thinkers spark off ideas - in the form of questions and solutions - through creative and curious activities such as Brainstorms and Worst Possible Idea.