Ideation is a creative process where designers generate ideas in sessions (e.g., brainstorming, worst possible idea). It is the third stage in the Design Thinking process. Participants gather with open minds to produce as many ideas as they can to address a problem statement in a facilitated, judgment-free environment.
See how Ideation helps build solutions.
It's challenging to gain the perspective to find design solutions. To have productive ideation sessions, you'll need a dedicated environment for standing back to seek and see every angle. First, though, your team must define the right problem to address. Ideation, or "Ideate", is the third step in the Design Thinking process – after “Empathize” (gaining user insights from research/observation) and “Define” (finding links/patterns within those insights to create a meaningful and workable problem statement or point of view).
Before starting to look for ideas, your team needs a clearly defined problem to tackle – a focused problem statement or point of view (POV) to inspire and guide everyone. “How might we…?” questions—e.g., “How might we design an app finding cheap hotels in safe neighborhoods?”—help in reframing issues and prompting effective collaboration towards potential solutions. To bring people together to conjure ideas and bypass established frontiers, you need a skilled facilitator and a creative environment, including a prepared space, featuring posters of personas, relevant information, etc. Your team also requires rules – e.g., a 2-hour time limit, quantity-over-quality focus, ban on distractions such as phones, and “There are no bad ideas” mindset. By being bold and curious, participants can challenge commonly held beliefs and explore possibilities past these obstacles. Team members should take each other's ideas and build on them, find ways to link concepts, recognize patterns and flip seemingly impossible notions over to reveal new insights.
"It's not about coming up with the right idea, it's about generating the broadest range of possibilities.
- d.school, An Introduction to Design Thinking PROCESS GUIDE
© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0
There are hundreds of ideation techniques to help you in your ideation sessions. You want an ideation technique that combines your conscious and unconscious mind—fusing the rational with the creative. It must match the sorts of ideas your team must generate and reflect their nature, needs and experience with ideation. Some crucial ones are:
Brainstorming – You build good ideas from each other’s wild ideas.
Braindumping – This is like brainstorming, but done individually.
Brainwriting – This is like brainstorming, but everyone writes down and passes ideas for others to add to before discussing these.
Brainwalking – This is like brainwriting, but members walk about the room, adding to others’ ideas.
Worst Possible Idea – You take an inverted brainstorming approach, emboldening more reserved individuals to produce bad ideas and yielding valuable threads.
Challenging Assumptions – You overturn established beliefs about problems, revealing fresh perspectives.
Mindmapping – You use this graphical technique to connect ideas to problems’ major and minor qualities.
Sketching/Sketchstorming – You use rough sketches/diagrams to express ideas/potential solutions and explore the design space.
Storyboarding – You develop a visual problem/design/solution-related story to illustrate a situation’s dynamics.
SCAMPER – You question problems through action verbs (“Substitute”, “Combine”, “Adapt”, “Modify”, “Put to another use”, “Eliminate”, “Reverse”) to produce solutions.
Bodystorming – You use role-playing in scenarios/customer-journey steps to find solutions.
Analogies – You draw comparisons to communicate ideas better.
Provocation – You use an extreme lateral-thinking technique to challenge established beliefs and explore paths beyond.
Movement – You take a “what if?” approach to overcoming obstacles in ideation and finding themes/trends/attributes towards reliable solutions.
Cheatstorm – You use previously ideated material as stimuli.
Crowdstorming – Your target audiences generate and validate ideas through feedback (e.g., social media) to provide valuable solution insights.
Creative Pause – You take time to pull back from obstacles.
Other methods for ideation include co-creation workshops (combining user empathy research, ideation and prototyping), gamestorming (gamification-oriented ideation methods) and prototyping. The beauty of ideation is its unbounded freedom, although structured environments are critical. If you get stuck, you have fallbacks: e.g., “breaking the law” (listing constraints to see if you can overcome them), “stealing” ideas (emulating applicable concepts from other industries), inverting the problem and laddering (moving problems between the abstract and the concrete).
We have a course on Design Thinking, featuring lots of hands-on tools for ideation.
Read some practical tips on effective Ideation.
The Nielsen Norman Group’s Aurora Harley examines Ideation challenges, benefits and more.
See Google’s take on approaching Ideation.
To run a practical ideation workshop, start by setting a clear objective for the session. Gather a diverse group of participants to bring varied perspectives. Kick off with warm-up exercises to stimulate creativity. Use brainstorming, mind mapping, or "How might we?" questions to generate ideas. Ensure a facilitator guides the session, keeping discussions on track. Encourage open communication, emphasizing that all ideas, even unconventional ones, are welcome. After idea generation, prioritize and filter ideas for further exploration. Conclude by assigning the next steps and responsibilities. For a deeper dive into ideation preparation and techniques, refer to the Interaction Design Foundation's article on ideation.
Ideation in psychology refers to the process of forming ideas or concepts. It's integral to human cognition, allowing individuals to generate, develop, and communicate abstract thoughts. In a clinical context, the term can also relate to "suicidal ideation," which means having thoughts or plans about self-harm or suicide. However, in a broader sense, ideation emphasizes the creative aspect of our cognitive processes, which is central to problem-solving, innovation, and day-to-day thinking.
Several effective ideation techniques help designers generate creative solutions. Among the most popular are:
Teasing Apart and Piecing Together: This method involves deconstructing ideas and reassembling them for fresh insights.
Three-way Comparisons: Comparing three items or concepts can uncover new perspectives.
Embrace Opposites: By examining opposing views, one can identify innovative solutions.
Multiple Classifications: Categorizing ideas in various ways can lead to novel combinations.
More Specific and More General: Shifting focus between detailed and broad views can spark creativity.
Bad Ideas: Embracing seemingly poor ideas can sometimes pave the way to brilliant ones.
Enhance your ideation skills—dive deeper into these and several other methods in our courses on Design Thinking and Creativity.
In design thinking, ideation is a crucial phase of creative brainstorming. As highlighted in this video by Riley Hunt, the UX design process follows five main steps: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test.
Specifically, during the Ideate phase, teams ensure everyone has a shared understanding of the problem at hand. A brainstorming session then follows, generating numerous solutions, even if some seem outlandish. After generating many ideas, teams evaluate these options, selecting the most viable and practical solutions to develop and prototype further. Ideation, therefore, serves as a bridge between understanding user needs and crafting tangible solutions.
Ideation is a broad term that encompasses various techniques and methods to generate, develop, and communicate new ideas. It's an integral part of the design thinking, helping teams explore solutions for complex problems. On the other hand, brainstorming is a specific, collaborative ideation technique where a group spontaneously contributes ideas without judgment. The goal of brainstorming is to produce a large quantity of ideas in a short time. In essence, while brainstorming is a popular form of ideation, ideation is the overarching process of generating ideas, encompassing many techniques beyond brainstorming. To understand more, explore our detailed article on brainstorming.
Ideation is the creative process of generating, developing, and communicating new ideas. Intent, conversely, is the underlying purpose or objective behind a specific action or design choice. Ideation involves brainstorming myriad solutions, while intent ensures the selected solution aligns with user needs and project goals. Semi-structured interviews can be invaluable for a deeper understanding of human behavior and decision-making. As this video highlights, these interviews help capture the "why" behind actions, revealing perceptions, values, and experiences.
However, they might not always charge the "what" or the tacit knowledge people take for granted. Therefore, complementing interviews with observation methods can offer a holistic view. Dive deeper into the ideation process in our comprehensive article, Ideation for Design.
Ideation and innovation are closely linked concepts central to the creative process. Ideation refers to the generation of new, novel ideas. It involves sparking diverse thoughts and navigating various forms of creativity, whether artistic, technical, or personal. On the other hand, innovation arises when you pair novel ideas (ideation) with their usefulness. More is needed for an argument to be unique; it must also effectively solve a problem or meet a need. Thus, while ideation emphasizes the birth of new ideas, innovation combines these ideas with practical utility to bring transformative solutions. Both concepts are essential for creative growth, but innovation requires a more comprehensive approach, fusing novelty with functionality.
For an in-depth exploration of ideation, check out the Design Thinking: The Ultimate Guide course offered by Interaction-Design.org. This comprehensive course delves into the design thinking process, emphasizing ideation techniques. Enroll to uncover effective brainstorming methods, collaborative idea generation practices, and strategies to boost creativity. Suitable for both newcomers and experienced designers, this course provides the necessary tools to master ideation and its real-world applications. Enhance your ideation prowess today!
Here's the entire UX literature on Ideation by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:
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