Skip to content

Setting up a good brainstorm session

  • Quickly generate lots of ideas, to help get an overview of the conceptual landscape. These are not necessarily new ideas (or good ideas). They may have been brewing for a while as individuals considered the problem beforehand. These ideas can become the seeds for solutions, to be investigated with prototypes.
  • Gather a team into a physical space where everyone can share perspectives on the problem and become aware of the potential solution spaces as they are surfaced. Done well, it can energize a team (and done poorly, it can deflate one).
  • Get clients or stakeholders to buy into the design process, and also learn what is important to these decision makers.

Design Thinking Handbook, Eli Woolery.

Setting up for a good brainstorm

  • Get into the right headspace
  • Limit the time
  • Keep the momentum going and stay on topic
  • Always say yes.
  • When an idea is put forward, participants should be encouraged to build on it and add to the idea.
  • Be visual and headline. Use white white boards, large sticky notes or paper and pin ideas to a wall.
  • Narrow down the ideas and then move on to prototyping the selected ideas.