Organizations search for a magical way to achieve creating new products, technologies, services, and spaces that people love and overcoming complex business, technological, and social problems with new ideas, processes, and business models. This requires a new way of thinking in this age of complexity and uncertainty with many unknowns. Design thinking has become the most distinctive way to achieve innovation in this setup. The core step of the design thinking methodology is the idea generation.
The objective of the idea generation phase is to find creative ideas that will solve the target audience’s challenge. This is the phase in which the team’s creativity and imagination should be at the top level. Brainstorming is the most effective technique in this phase as well as mapping the customers mind.
Idea Generation Techniques
Brainstorming is listing creative ideas spontaneously. Some best practices:
• Invite all of the relevant stakeholders.
• If needed, use ice-breaking techniques.
• Go over design challenge, research results and insights uncovered during the previous phases in the beginning.
• Motivate participants to generate as many ideas as possible, no matter if they are realistic or achievable.
• When needed, steer participants to generate ideas related to the design challenge.
• In order not to discourage participants, do not judge the quality of their ideas.
• Make whiteboards available because some people can express their ideas better by drawing.
• Do not evaluate the feasibility of solution ideas during brainstorming sessions. These details should be handled during prioritization sessions.
• Be careful with participants who criticize others’ ideas with a negative attitude. Do not let them demotivate others.
Brain Dump: This is used for participants that are hesitant to share their ideas in front of other people.
• Participants individually write down their ideas on sticky notes.
• They silently write each idea on a separate sticky note.
• This process is completed in a given period.
• Then participants present their ideas to each other.
Reverse Brainstorming: This is used for participants that have difficulty generating creative ideas.
• Describe the problem that needs to be solved.
• Ask them to imagine how it the problem could be even worse.
• Ask the participants how they can cause the problem instead of how they can solve it.
• List all possible options that cause the problem.
• Use these root causes as a basis to generate solutions for the original problem.
Benchmarking Technique: Design Thinking is not only about functional and usable solutions but also about desirable solutions that have a «got to have it» impact. The most original solutions are those that satisfy people’s real needs in the most creative way. Therefore, the focus should be on creating original or at least reinterpreted solutions instead of reproducing competitors’ solutions.
”Be like the sun but not the moon – illuminate yourself with the light of users instead of competitors.”
After generating solution ideas, the benchmarking technique can be used to explore what kinds of solutions competitors have. However, be careful not to copy competitors’ mistakes.
Priorization Technique: Since every project has limited resources, design thinking teams should organize assessment sessions after the brainstorming sessions and apply convergent thinking to prioritize and select which solution ideas to prototype and test. Prioritization should take care of two main criteria: Value proposition and implementation difficulty. During prioritization, even a solution idea with a high value proposition can be disregarded if it’s too difficult to implement (financially or technically).
Value Proposition Canvas Technique: This technique can be used to assess the effectiveness of solution ideas in satisfying the needs and wants of target users. The value proposition canvas shows how they can benefit from the new solution in getting the expected gains and relieving the pains listed on the empathy maps. It also explains the features of the solution.
Idea Generation Skills
The effectiveness of brainstorming sessions largely depends on the design thinking teams’ creativity and its ability to improvise and think out of the box.
Improvisation: The act of generating creative solutions for problems on the fly without a lot of upfront preparation. Improvisation skills can best be improved by being involved in artful thinking activities.
Thinking out of the box: ”The problems that exist in the world now cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.” – Albert Einstein
Thinking out of the box requires the ability to make paradigm shifts, prevent shallow situations, and approach problems from different viewpoints.
Creativity: ”Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” – Pablo Picasso
Creativity is a skill that is best attained during childhood by being exposed to liberal arts from an early age. However, most countries’ educational systems lack this dimension. People missing this opportunity in childhood should at least be introduced to liberal arts in later stages of their lives.
”Art and engineering aren’t that different. Engineering that isn’t beautiful has its drawbacks, and art that isn’t engineered is also less interesting.” – Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer
Creativity Inspired by Nature
Nature has always been the most influential factor triggering the creativity of artists.Here just a few examples:
• Ancients drawings found in caves always mirror natural subjects
• ”Art is a harmony parallel with nature.» – impressionist Paul Cezanne
• The career of the Renaissance artist Giotto di Bondone started with animal drawings on rocks
• ”The great book always open and which we should make an effort to read, is that of Nature.» – Antoni Gaudi, architect of buildings with ”organic style”
• Steve Jobs revolutionized the high-tech industry by positioning people’s natural behaviors at the center of the product-development process. His objective was to create natural-born users of his products. Now, even kids can use his company’s phones and touch pads with gestures similar to their natural behaviors.
• The importance of being inspired by nature holds true not only in art and architecture but also in just about every industry. Nature is in a continuous creativity process.
• Innovation is observing nature’s creative artifacts and using them to meet specific people’s specific needs.
