CHAPTER 6

IDEATE

Introduction
Ideation is the process where you generate ideas and solutions through sessions
such as Sketching, Prototyping, Brainstorming, Brainwriting, Worst Possible Idea, and a
wealth of other ideation techniques. Ideation is also the third stage in the Design Thinking
process. Although many people might have experienced a “brainstorming” session
before, it is not easy to facilitate a truly fruitful ideation session. In this chapter, some
processes and guidelines which will help you facilitate and prepare for productive,
effective, innovative and fun ideation sessions will be discussed.

Learning Outcomes/Objectives

After the completion of this chapter, the student must be able to:

1. Generate ideas in solving the problem based on the defined problem; and
2. Design a marketable product that will solve the defined problem

Learning Content/Topic

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.
When facilitated in a successful way, Ideation is an exciting process. 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.
“Ideation is the mode of the design process in which you concentrate on idea generation.
Mentally it represents a process of “going wide” in terms of concepts and outcomes.
Ideation provides both the fuel and also the source material for building prototypes and
getting innovative solutions into the hands of your users.”
– d.school, An Introduction to Design Thinking PROCESS GUIDE
The main aim of the Ideation stage is to use creativity and innovation in order to
develop solutions. 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.
In the Design Thinking process, the Ideation stage often follows the first two
stages, which are the Empathise stage and Define stage. There is a significant overlap
between the Define and Ideation stages of a typical Design Thinking process. Interpreting
information and defining the problem(s) and ideation both drive the generation of problem
solutions. This overlap is represented in the types of methods design teams employ
during these two stages. For example, Bodystorm and “How Might We” questions are
often used in both of these stages.
Ideation Will Help You:
• Ask the right questions and innovate.
• Step beyond the obvious solutions and therefore increase the innovation
potential of your solution.
• Bring together perspectives and strengths of team members.
• Uncover unexpected areas of innovation.
• Create volume and variety in your innovation options.
• Get obvious solutions out of your heads, and drive your team beyond them.

Ideation Methods to Spark Innovative Ideas

There are hundreds of ideation methods. Some methods are merely renamed or
slightly adapted versions of more foundational techniques. Here you’ll get brief overview
of some of the best methods:

• Brainstorm
• Braindump
• Brainwrite
• Brainwalk
• Challenge Assumptions
• SCAMPER
• Mindmap
• Sketch or Sketchstorm
• Storyboard
• Analogies
• Provocation
• Movement
• Bodystorm
• Gamestorming
• Cheatstorm
• Crowdstorm
• Co-Creation Workshops
• Prototype
 • Creative Pause
Active Facilitation
Although 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. 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. To sit the team down with a blank piece of
paper and ask them to come up with ideas will likely result in failure. Likewise, to have
everyone shout out their own ideas is likely to result in failure.

People need guidance, inspiration and activities, in a physical and cognitive

manner, in order to get the process started. 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.

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.
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. The Ideation
room must have sufficient space for people to feel comfortable, but the atmosphere
shouldn't be sterile, and team members shouldn't have to shout in order to be heard. You
should also designate someone to take down contributors' ideas and draw/write them on
the whiteboard/wall/poster. If the process begins to slow down and people seem to be
running into a dead-end, the facilitator should impose constraints, such as: "what if there
was no top-level navigation bar?" or "How-might-we go about the task if we were 8 years
old?" Alternatively, you might want to set targets, such as filling a brainstorming sheet
within ten minutes. To start understanding what it takes to facilitate a successful Ideation
session, we’ll take a closer look at the best Brainstorming rules.

Brainstorming Rules
Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright
terms and licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
At its most basic level, a Brainstorm session involves sprouting related points from
a central idea. Brainstorming is one of the primary methods employed during the Ideation
stage of a typical Design Thinking process. Brainstorming is a great way to generate
many ideas by leveraging the collective thinking of the group, by engaging with each
other, listening, and building on other ideas. This method involves focusing on one
problem or challenge at a time, while team members build on each other’s responses and
ideas with the aim of generating as many potential solutions as possible. These can then
be refined and narrowed down to the best solution(s). Participants must then select the
best, the most practical, or the most innovative ideas from the options they’ve come up
with.

We’ve summarised the best practices and brain storming rules from the Institute
of Design at Stanford (d.school) and the successful design company, IDEO who
celebrates Design Thinking.

1. Set a time limit

2. Start with a problem statement, point of view, possible questions, a plan, or a
goal and stay focused on the topic: Identify the core subject or the main aim of
the exercise. For example, what are you trying to achieve? Are you trying to improve
a certain feature? Are you focusing on ways to improve the overall experience?
Condense the main issue into a problem statement and condense it into a short
“How Might We” sentence. You may even be able to synthesise this into single word.
Your ideas should always branch off from this central headline.
3. Stay on Topic: It is easy to veer off and take lots of different directions during
brainstorming sessions, especially when you are trying to be open-minded and
unconstrained in your efforts to come up with ideas. It is important that members
stay on topic. Focus is essential; otherwise, the process can become confusing, or
ideas can become muddled and cross between solutions for other problems. Every
effort should be made by the facilitator to keep members on the central theme and
goal. You might even want to designate a particular brainstormer to maintain the
thread and prevent team members veering off course.
 4. Defer judgement or criticism, including non-verbal: The brainstorming
environment is not the time to argue or for questioning other members’ ideas; each
member has a responsibility to foster relations that advance the session. For this
reason, judgement comes later so rather than blocking an idea, you and your other
team members are encouraged to come up with your own ideas that sprout off from
those provided by the other members of your team.
5. Encourage weird, wacky and wild ideas: Once again, as brainstorming is a
creative activity, each member should try to encourage other members and create
an environment in which they feel comfortable verbalising their ideas. Free thinking
may produce some ideas that are wide off the mark, but brainstorming is about
drawing up as many ideas as possible which are then whittled down until the best
possible option remains.
6. Aim for quantity: Brainstorming is effectively a creative exercise, in which design
thinkers are encouraged to let their imaginations run wild. The emphasis is on
quantity, rather than quality at this stage.
7. Build on each others' ideas: One idea typically leads on from another; by
considering the thoughts, opinions, and ideas of other team members during the
brainstorming session, new insights and perspectives can be achieved, which then
inform one's own ideas. Thus, the team will continue to build ideas which hopefully
become progressively more refined and targeted towards the central issue.
8. Be visual: The physical act of writing something down or drawing an image in order
to bring an idea to life can help people think up new ideas or view the same ideas in
different way. The brainstorming session is more likely to evolve if team members
visualise and bring ideas to life rather than rely on discussion alone.
9. One conversation at a time: Design thinkers (or brainstormers) should focus on
one point or conversation at a time so as not to muddy their thinking and lose sight
of the thread or current objective.

Ideation Methods to Select Ideas

Once the Ideation session is complete, the ideas must be collected, categorised,
refined and narrowed down, so the team is able to select the best solutions, ideas, and
strategies from a shortlist. These methods can help you select the best idea at the end of
an Ideation session:

• Post-it Voting or Dot Voting.

• Four Categories Method
• Bingo Selection
• Idea Affinity Maps
• Now Wow How Matrix
• Six Thinking Hats
 • Lean Startup Machine Idea Validation Board
• Idea Selection Criteria
In the following section, we’ll provide you with a brief introduction to some of the
best methods.

Post-it Voting or Dot Voting

Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright

terms and licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

In post-it voting, all members are given a number of votes (three to four should do)
in order to choose their favorite ideas. Ideas that are generated in the Ideation sessions
are written down on individual post-its, and members can vote by using stickers or a
marker to make a dot on the post-it note corresponding to the ideas they like. This process
allows every member to have an equal say in choosing from the shortlisted ideas.
Four Categories Method

Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright

terms and licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

The four categories method involves dividing ideas according to their relative
abstractness, ranging from the most rational choice to the 'long shot' choice. The four
categories are: the rational choice, the most likely to delight, the darling, and the long
shot. Members then decide upon one or two ideas for each of these categories. This
method ensures that the team covers all grounds, from most the practical to those ideas
with the most potential to deliver innovative solutions.

Bingo Selection

Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright

terms and licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
 Similarly, the Bingo selection method inspires members to divide ideas. However,
in this method, contributors are encouraged to split ideas according to a variety of form
factors, such as their potential application in a physical prototype, a digital prototype, and
an experience prototype.

Teaching and Learning Activities

Discussion
Research
Group Activities

Flexible Teaching Learning Modality (FTLM) adapted

Video Conferencing/Google classroom

Assessment Task
Review Question:
1. What is ideation in the Design Thinking process?
2. What are the different ideation methods that can be used in the ideation stage of
Design Thinking process?
3. Enumerate the methods that can be used in selecting the best idea at the end of
the ideation session?
References:
https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/stage-3-in-the-design-thinking-
process-ideate