UX LESSON

What is Brainstorming?

Brainstorming is a session that helps generate innovative ideas. It’s one of many methods of ideation the process of coming up with new ideas and it’s core to the design thinking process.

The term brainstorming was invented by Alex Osborn, an Adman at BBDO, who first described the process in his 1942 book “How to Think Up”.

Brain Writing

Brain Writing is an important brainstorming technique. This approach helps improve focus and organization. The general principle of this technique is to separate idea generation from the discussion.

Brain Writing is a quiet activity giving chance to its participants more time to think independently, which is a welcome change to the introverts in the team. The topic is shared with the team and team members write down their ideas.

Rather can the conventional way where a group comes together and yells out creative ideas and one person tries to capture them on a whiteboard or in a document. Brain Writing helps eliminate bias and encourages everyone on the team to share their own ideas.

S.C.A.M.P.E.R.

This creative brainstorming technique helps generate ideas for new products and services by encouraging you to think about how you could improve ideas.

S.C.A.M.P.E.R. stands for:

• Substitute (What would happen if we swapped X for Y?)
• Combine (What would happen if we combined X and Y?)
• Adapt (How could we adapt this thing to a different context?)
• Modify (How could we modify this product to add more value?)
• Put to Another Use (What other uses might this project have?)
• Eliminate (What could we remove from this project?)
• Reverse (How might we reorganize this project to make it more effective?). Utilize the templates to track everyone’s responses.

Starbursting

In a starburst brainstorming session, your team will start with an idea or challenge at the center and then create a six-point star around it. Each point represents a question: who, what, when, where, why, and how. Because it focuses on questions rather than answers, starbursting encourages the group to examine an idea from every angle.

Rapid ideation

In rapid ideation, everyone writes down as many ideas as possible in a set amount of time before any ideas are discussed, critiqued, or fleshed out. For this brainstorming technique, you will need to set a time constraint, otherwise, you’ll risk losing the sense of urgency.

This brainstorming exercise can be helpful to avoid the all-too-common scenario when an idea is shot down before it has time to grow, transform, and develop. The time constraint can also prevent people from talking themselves out of an idea before they share it with a group — a common brainstorming mishap.

SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis identifies organization strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Usually, it’s used to decide whether a potential project or venture is worth undertaking. In brainstorming, it’s used to stimulate collaborative analysis. What are our real strengths? Do we have weaknesses that we rarely discuss? New ideas can come out of this tried-and-true technique.

Brain-Netting (Online Brainstorming)

Brain netting involves brainstorming on the Internet. This requires someone to set up a system where individuals can share their ideas privately, but then collaborate publicly. There are software companies that specialize in just such types of systems, like Slack or Google Docs.

Once ideas have been generated, it may be a good idea to come together in person, but it’s also possible that online idea generation and discussion will be successful on their own. This is an especially helpful approach for remote teams to use, though any team can make use of it.

Role Storming

Ask your participants to imagine themselves in the role of a person whose experience relates to your brainstorming goal. Act out a scene, with participants pretending to take the other’s point of view. Why might they be dissatisfied? What would it take for them to feel better about their experience or outcomes?

Round Robin Brainstorming

A “round robin” is a game in which everyone gets a chance to take part. That means everyone:

1. must share an idea and
2. wait until everyone else has shared before suggesting a second idea or critiquing ideas

This is a great way to encourage shy individuals to speak up while keeping dominant personalities from taking over the brainstorming session.

Charrette

The Charrette method breaks up the problem into smaller chunks, with small groups discussing each element of the problem for a set period of time. Once each group has discussed one issue, their ideas are passed on to the next group who builds on them. By the end of the Charrette, each idea may have been discussed five or six times — and the ideas discussed have been refined.

“What If” Brainstorming

These are all different types of “what if” scenarios that can spur radically creative thinking — or at least get people laughing and working together!