DESIGN THINKING

3 methods to organize productive brainstorming

Tips and tricks, checklists, and slide examples

What do you imagine when you hear “brainstorming”? Maybe a crowd of people outshouting each other, assaulting the whiteboard, and trying to win control over screen sharing? Fortunately, brainstorming has a bright side: civilized ideating together. At least, this is how it appears in the books on creativity. So, can we make it real?

Originally published in Smashing Magazine.

Common principles

All brainstorming techniques have much in common. Although “rituals” vary, the essence is the same. Participants look at a subject from different sides and come up with ideas. They write their thoughts down and then either sort or prioritize them. But here’s the thing. Without the rules of the game, brainstorming won’t work. It all boils down to the following principles.

1. The more, the better. Brainstorming aims at quantity, which later turns into quality. The more ideas a team generates, the broader choice it gains. It’s normal when two or more participants say the same thing. It’s normal if some ideas are funny. A facilitator’s task is to encourage people to share what is hidden in their minds.
2. No criticism. The goal of brainstorming is to generate a pool of ideas. All ideas are welcome. A boss has no right to silence a subordinate. A data analyst shouldn’t make fun of a backend engineer’s vision. A designer shouldn’t challenge the usability of a teammate’s suggestion.
3. Follow the plan. Only a goal-oriented and time-bound activity is productive, whereas uncontrolled bursts of creativity, as a rule, fail. Don’t wait for a miracle to happen — organize it.

Here are the slides you can use as an intro to brainstorming.

Now when the principles are clear, you are to decide who will participate. Invite as many different experts as possible, including business owners, analysts, marketers, developers, salespeople, and users. All participants should be related to the subject or be interested in it. Otherwise, they’ll fantasize about a topic they’ve never dealt with.

Method 1. Six Thinking Hats

This method was invented in 1985 by Edward de Bono, a Maltese physician, psychologist, and consultant.

Brainstorming workshop for ELEKS design team

Overview

• Complexity: normal.
• Subject: a process, a service, a product, a feature, anything. For example, one of the topics in our session was the improvement of the designers’ office infrastructure.
• Duration: 1–1.5 hours.
• Facilitation: 1 facilitator for a group of 5–8 members. If there are more people, better divide them into smaller groups and involve assistants. We split our design crew of over 20 people into three groups working simultaneously on their topics.

Materials

• Slides with step-by-step instructions.
• A standalone timer or laptop with an online timer in the fullscreen mode.
• 6 colored paper hats or any recognizable hat symbols for each participant. The colors are blue, yellow, green, white, red, and black. For example, we used crowns instead of hats, and it was fun.
• Sticky notes of 6 colors: blue, yellow, green, white, red, and brown or any other dark tint for representing black. 1–2 packs of each color per team of 5–8 people would be enough.
• A whiteboard or a flipchart or a large sheet of paper on a table or wall.
• Black marker pens for each participant (markers should be whiteboard-safe if you choose this kind of surface).

Process

Start a brainstorming session with a five-minute intro. What will participants do? Why is it important? What will the outcome be? What’s next? It’s time to explain the steps. In my case, we described the whole process beforehand to ensure people get the concept of “thinking hats.”

De Bono’s “hat” represents a particular way of perceiving reality. Different people are used to “wearing” one favorite “hat” most of the time, which limits creativity and breeds stereotypes. For example, risk analysts are used to finding weaknesses and threats. That’s why such a phenomenon as gut feeling usually doesn’t ring them a bell.

Trying on “hats” is a metaphor that helps people start thinking differently with ease. Below is an example of the slides that explain what each “hat” means. Our goal was to make people feel prepared, relaxed, and not afraid of the exercise complexity.

The blue “hat” is an odd one out. It has an auxiliary role and embodies the process of brainstorming itself. It starts the session and finishes it. White, yellow, black, red, and green “hats” represent different interpretations of reality. For example, the red one symbolizes intuitive and emotional perception. When the black “hat” is on, participants wake up their inner “project manager” and look at the subject through the lens of budgets, schedules, costs, and revenues.

There are various schemas of “hats,” depending on the goal. We wanted to try all the “hats” and chose a universal, all-purpose order:

1. Blue — preparation.
2. White — collecting available and missing data.
3. Red — listening to emotions and unproven thoughts.
4. Yellow — noticing what is good right now.
5. Green — thinking about improvements and innovations.
6. Black — analyzing risks and resources.
7. Blue — summarizing.

Now the exercise itself. Each slide is a cheat sheet with a task and prompts. A facilitator starts the timer when a new step starts and a proper slide appears on the screen. Some steps have an extended duration; other steps require less time. For instance, it’s easy to agree on a topic and draw a canvas but writing down ideas is more time-consuming.

When participants see a “hat” slide (except the blue one), they are to generate ideas, write them on sticky notes, and put the notes on the whiteboard or flipchart. For example, the yellow “hat” is displayed on the screen. People put on yellow paper hats and think about the benefits and nice features the subject has now. They concisely write these thoughts on the sticky notes of a corresponding color (for the black “hat” — any dark color can be used so that you don’t need to buy special white markers). All the sticky notes of the same color should be put in the corresponding column of the canvas.

The last step — Affinity sorting — doesn’t follow the original technique. We thought it would be pointless to stick dozens of colored notes and call it a day. We added the sorting part to summarize ideas and make their implementation more tangible.

The teams had to find notes about similar things, group them into clusters, and name each cluster. For example, in the topic “Improvement of the designers’ office infrastructure,” my colleagues created such clusters as “Chair ergonomics,” “Floor and walls,” and “Hardware upgrade.”

We finished the session with mini-presentations of findings. A captain of each group listed the clusters they had come up with and shared one most exciting observation or impression.

Method 2. Walt Disney’s Creative Strategy

Walt Disney’s creative method was discovered and modeled by Robert Dilts, an expert in neuro-linguistic programming, in 1994.

An educational session on brainstorming for Projector Design School

Overview

• Complexity: easy.
• Subject: anything, especially projects you’ve been postponing for a long time or dreams you cannot start fulfilling for unknown reasons. For example, we chose the topic “Improvement of the designer-client communication process.”
• Duration: 1 hour.
• Facilitation: 1 facilitator for a group of 5–8 members. When we conducted an educational workshop on brainstorming, my co-trainers and I had four teams of six members working simultaneously in the room.

Materials

• Slides with step-by-step instructions.
• A standalone timer or laptop with an online timer in the fullscreen mode.
• Standard or large yellow sticky notes (1–2 packs per team of 5–8 people).
• Small red sticky notes (1–2 packs per team).
• The tiniest sticky stripes or sticky dots for voting (1 pack per team).
• A whiteboard or a flipchart or a large sheet of paper on a table or wall.
• Black marker pens for each participant (markers should be whiteboard-safe if you choose this kind of surface).

Process

This method is called after the original thinking manner of Walt Disney, a famous animator and film producer. Disney didn’t use any “technique”; his creative process was intuitive. Robert Dilts discovered this creative know-how much later based on the memories of Disney’s colleagues. Although the original Dilts’s concept is designed for personal use, we managed to turn it into a group format.

Disney’s strategy works owing to the strict separation of three roles — the dreamer, the realist, and the critic. People are used to mixing these roles while thinking about the future, and that’s why they often fail. “Let’s do X. But it’s so expensive. And risky… Maybe later,” this is how an average person dreams. As a result, innovative ideas get buried in doubts and fears.

In this kind of brainstorming, the facilitator’s goal is to prevent participants from mixing the roles and nipping creative ideas in the bud. We helped the team to get into the mood and extract pure roles through open questions on the slides and introductory explanations.

For example, here is my intro to the first role. “The dreamer is not restrained by limitations or rules of the real world. The dreamer generates as many ideas as possible and doesn’t think about the obstacles in the way of their implementation. He or she imagines the most fun, easy, simple, and pleasant ways of solving a problem. The dreamer is unaware of criticism, planning, and rationalism altogether.”

When participants come up with a cloud of ideas, they proceed to the next step. It’s essential to explain to them what the second role means. I started with the following words, “The realist is the dreamer’s best friend. The realist is a manager who can convert a vague idea into a step-by-step plan and find necessary resources. The realist has no idea about criticism. He or she tries to find some real-world implementation for dreamer’s ideas, namely who, when, and how can make an idea true.”

Brainstormers write down possible solutions on sticky notes and put them on the corresponding idea circles. Of course, some ideas can have no solution, whereas others may be achieved in many ways.

The third role is the trickiest one because people think this is the bad guy who drags the dreamer’s and realist’s work through the mud. Fortunately, this is not true. “The critic is the dreamer’s and realist’s best friend,” I started my explanation, “This person analyses risks and cares about the safety of proposed solutions. The critic doesn’t touch ideas and works with solutions only. The critic tries to help and foresee potential issues in advance.” The team defines risks and writes them down on smaller red notes. A solution can have no risks or several risks.

After that, team members start dot voting for the most promising ideas. They make a decision based on the value of an idea, the availability of solutions, and the severity of connected risks. Ideas without solutions cannot be voted for. During my workshops, each participant had 3 voting dots. They could distribute them in different ways, for instance, stick the dots to three different ideas or support one favorite idea with all the dots.

The last activity is roadmapping. A team takes the ideas that gained the most support (typically, 6–10) and arranges them on a timeline depending on the implementation effort. If an idea is easy to put into practice, it goes to the column “Now.” If an idea is complex and requires a lot of preparation or favorable conditions, it goes farther on the timeline.

Of course, there should be time for sharing the main findings. Teams present their timelines with shortlisted ideas and tell about the tendencies they have observed during the exercise.

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Method 3. SCAMPER

This technique was proposed in 1953 by Alex Osborn, best known for co-founding and leading BBDO, a worldwide advertising agency network.

Brainstorming workshop for ELEKS design team

Overview

• Complexity: normal to hard.
• Subject: ideally, technical or tangible things, although the author and evangelists of this method say it’s applicable for anything. From my experience, SCAMPER works less effectively with abstract objects. For example, the team barely coped with the topic “Improve communication between a designer and client,” but it worked great for “Invent the best application for digital prototyping.”
• Duration: up to 2 hours.
• Facilitation: 1 facilitator for a group of 5–8 members.

Materials

• Slides with step-by-step instructions.
• A standalone timer or laptop with an online timer in the fullscreen mode.
• Standard yellow sticky notes (7 packs per team of 5–8 people).
• A whiteboard or a flipchart or a large sheet of paper on a table or wall.
• Black marker pens for each participant (markers should be whiteboard-safe if you choose this kind of surface).
• Optionally: Thinkpak cards by Michael Michalko (1 pack per team).

Process

This brainstorming method employs various ways to modify an object. It’s aimed at activating inventory thinking and helps optimize an existing product or create a brand new thing.

Each letter in the acronym represents a certain transformation you can apply to the subject of brainstorming.

• S — Substitute.
• C — Combine.
• A — Adapt.
• M — Modify.
• P — Put to other uses.
• E — Eliminate.
• R — Rearrange or reverse.

It’s necessary to illustrate each step with an example and ask participants to generate a couple of ideas themselves for the sake of training. As a result, you’ll be sure they won’t get stuck. We explained the mechanism by giving sample ideas for improving such an ordinary object as a ballpoint pen.

• Substitute the ink with something edible.
• Combine the body and the grip so that they are one piece.
• Adapt a knife for “writing” on wood like a pen.
• Modify the body so that it becomes flexible — for wearing as a bracelet.
• Use a pen as a hairpin or arrow for darts.
• Eliminate the clip and use a magnet instead.
• Reverse the clip. As a result, the nib will be oriented up, and the pen won’t spill into a pocket.

When the audience doesn’t have any questions left, you can start. First of all, team members agree on the subject formulation. Then they draw a canvas on a whiteboard or large sheet.

Once a team sees one of the SCAMPER letters on the screen, they start generating ideas using the corresponding method: substitute, combine, adapt, modify, etc. They write their ideas down and stick the notes into corresponding canvas columns. Questions on the slides remind them what each step means, and time limitation helps to concentrate and not dive into discussions.

Affinity sorting — the last step — is our team’s contribution to the original technique. Otherwise, people quickly forget all valuable findings and return to the normal state of things. Just imagine how discouraging it will be if the results of a two-hour ideation session are put on the back burner.

Thinkpak cards

It’s a set of brainstorming cards created by Michael Michalko. Thinkpak makes a session more exciting through gamification. Each card represents a certain letter from SCAMPER. Participants shuffle the pack, take cards in turn, and come up with corresponding ideas about an object. It’s fun to compete in the number of ideas each participant generates for a given card within a limited time, for instance, 3–5 minutes.

My teammates and I have tried brainstorming with Thinkpak and without it, and it works both ways. Cards are great for training. If your team has never participated in brainstorming sessions, it’ll be great to play the cards first and then switch to a business subject.

Lessons learned

1. Dry run. People often become disappointed in brainstorming if the first session they participate in fails. Some people I worked with have a prejudice toward creativity and consider it a waste of time. Fortunately, we tried all the methods internally — in the design team. So, all the actual brainstorming went well. Moreover, our confidence helped others believe in the power of brainstorming exercises.
2. Relevant topic and audience. Brainstorming can fail if you invite people who don’t have a suitable background or the power to change anything. Once I asked a team of design juniors to ideate about improving the process of selling design services to clients. They lacked experience and couldn’t generate plenty of ideas. Fortunately, it was a training session, and we changed the topic.
3. Documenting outcomes. Alright, the session is over. Participants go home or return to their workplaces. Almost undoubtedly, they won’t recall a single thing the following day. I recommend creating a wrap-up document with photos and digitized canvases. The quicker you write and share it, the higher the chance of ideas implementation is.

Further reading

• “Six Thinking Hats,” a book by Edward de Bono.
• “Walt Disney: Strategies of Genius” and “Walt Disney — Planning Strategy (Storyboarding),” articles by Robert Dilts.
• “The Secret of Walt Disney’s Creativity,” an article by Mark McGuinness.
• “Scamper: Creative Games and Activities for Imagination Development,” a book by Bob Eberle.
• “Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques,” a book by Michael Michalko.

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