6: Brainstorms & Energizers (EN)Brainstorm and energizers is the glue of a good design thinking process.
It can be quite a challenge to come up with good ideas on command, especially when you are tired and frustrated that you can't yet see the light at the end of tunnel.
So good brinstorm methods are essential to trigger your creative ideas, and if one of them doesn't work, then just try another one!
Also as a facilitator you need to be able to guage your team to find out when they need a little pick-me-up. In this module you can find some ideas for enegizers that should reenvigorate your team for another round in the ring.
Embracing brainstorming in design thinking injects a burst of creativity and teamwork. It's like a playground for ideas, where everyone's voice gets a chance. This lively process transforms brainstorm sessions into a fun, collaborative dance of innovation, ensuring the final design is not just good but outstanding.
You can choose from a variety of different types of brainstorming: Quiet or loud, Physical or immersive, collective or individual. But common for all of them is that they generate lots of ideas. In the brainstorm phase quantity is a priority.
It's better to have many ideas to choose from in the next phases so if one of the methods doesn't seem to be working then try some others to see if you can get the creative spirit going.
Pick an object to throw around. Get the team in a circle. Throw the object to someone. This person has to say an idea out loud and thow the potatoe to someone else, who has to say an idea and so on and so on. Remember to have somebody standing next to the circle to write down all the ideas!
The point of this exercise is to think fast and override in mental blocks we have of our own ideas. But being put on the spot can be difficult so if you can't think of anything just say pass, and pass the potatoe on. Remember it's hot, so keep the illusion alive.
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Sometimes you need a different perspective! Lay on the floor, put your heads in the middle to form a star and start ideating on a HMW question. Do it loudly, so the others can pick up your idea. Throw the sticky notes with the ideas in the middle behind your heads.
This is always a fun exercise, and the main point is to get inspiration from the others and build on them. The awkward position and the closeness to your team members creates a special bond. Have fun and laugh and borrow and build form each others ideas.
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Movement is great to get creative muscles going. With the whole team, start walking around in a circle in front of a board. Every time you walk by the board put an idea there. Do this loudly, so others can build on your ideas.
Variation
Walk around in a circle and write your ideas in silence, Then put them on the back of the person in front of you. After the TimeBox collect the ideas and put them on the board.
Moving around is a great way to spark ideas, and you can follow the process of the others that may inspire you to write more ideas down.
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This is about exploring the radical opposite direction. For that, turn your How Might We? question on its head and ideate. For example, if your HMW question is: “HMW turn an airport into a playground”, the opposite would be “HMW turn an airport into a prison“ or similar. These ideas can spark new thoughts and solutions for your actual challenge.
This method should obviously not be used as the only one you try. But negative brainstorming can prove an effective way to break the inertia of a brainstorm process. If all you can think of are reasons for why your idea can't work - embrace it, and let your worst ideas come to life. If nothing alse you will be able to reject them, and maybe come up with something better because of it.
Using analogies comes in handy if you have the feeling the team is stuck. It sets the team on a different mindset and also frees them from concerns about implementability. Ask “How would Superman solve that question?“. Depending on your challenge you can also use different contexts. “How would Apple solve that question?“ or IKEA or any other brand or fictional character that everyone knows and that stands for certain values.
The point of this method is to relive yourself from the restraint of realism or feasability. It's OK to think about magical solutions, if we can later come up with some actual way of getting it done. But having access to super powers might give you idears that you would otherwise never have thought of.
This is a good method for getting deeper into ideas:
Divide your team into groups of 4. Everyone in the team gets a blank A4 paper. Fold it 3 times, so you have 8 different fields. Everyone picks one idea they want to evolve and puts it in the first field. Build upon this idea in the next field. Add something or come up with a variation of it.
After that: give that paper to somebody else in your team, and you get a paper from somebody else. Build on the idea from the last field. In the end you have 7 rounds and 20 ideas per group.
This Method sounds like it's time consuming, but you can do the whole exercise in under 20 minutes if you get 2 minutes per round.
Inspiration is crucial for ideation. So also feel free to look at what other teams have been brainstorming. Take a walk around the workshop space, look at sticky notes, read random notes. You can pick up on insights, observations and ideas of others. Bring them back into your team and share them.
This works best if you are a big team that is divided into groups, but you might also just use this tecnique as a follow up of another brainstrom. Take 2 minutes to read the board, see if you can spot something that triggers more ideas in you, and add them to the board
As you have already learned, brainstorming should be a fun activity that should leave you with loads of good (and not so good) ideas to work with in the next phase. Just keep these tips in mind:
Build on the Ideas of Others
We do this in teams because we want to have the experience and the creative energy of many people to solve a challenge. In ideation it is important not to work alone but collectively, jump on each other’s thought process and infuse your thinking on top of it.
One Conversation at a Time
It is hard to build on each other’s thoughts when several discussions are going on. Design Thinking and especially Ideation is a collaborative endeavour. Make sure the team is always on the same page and that only one person speaks at a time.
Stay Focused on the Topic
We want to use our time efficiently. It is easy to get side tracked and when doing team work we need to rely on everyone in the team to be focussed and involved in the team’s thinking process. With good time boxing there is time for focussed work and also focussed breaks. Respect the breaks!
Be Visual
We rely heavily on written and spoken words in our work. But drawing and sketching gives another way of expression and further illustrates your ideas. Drawings also attract attention!
Go for Quantity
There is a saying: “If you want to have a good idea, first have a lot of ideas“. You want to put out everything that is in your team’s imagination. There is time for generating ideas and there is time for evaluating ideas. Now is the time for churning them out, in masses!
Defer Judgement
When you want to start a wild flow of ideas, the worst thing to do is to be critical of the ideas. Being critical is good, but not when you are about to start brainstorming. So, make sure everyone in the team knows, that right now everything is valuable and we will be critical of the ideas at a later stage.
Have Fun
Under pressure you cannot think freely. Make sure you and your team are relaxed but focussed on the task. Try to eliminate outside pressure like deadlines and outcome expectations. When we have fun, we are encouraged to express our opinion and also put ideas out that are uncommon. That is the goal.
Encourage Wild Ideas
Because we are looking for innovative ways to solve a problem, it is necessary to go beyond what is known, common and expected. Encourage ideas that may not be realistic now. Nothing is impossible.
Now you have some new inspiration for fun brainstorms and energizers it's time to try them out for yourself.
Use them anytime you need to come up a some ideas in your team, and find the ones that you are most comfortable with.
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