Effective brainstorming (without feeling lost)

Published in

UX Collective

6 min readDec 6, 2019

Being in the industry for a while and working with agencies, startups and significant big firms, the one thing I noticed and personally faced is that people get lost in the process of brainstorming. So to explain brainstorming it is a method for generating ideas to solve a problem Brainstorming combines a relaxed, informal approach to problem-solving with lateral thinking.

It encourages people to come up with thoughts and ideas that can, at first, seem a bit off sometimes. Some of these ideas can be crafted into original, creative solutions to a problem, while others can spark even more ideas that can go beyond MVP (minimum viable product) or totally something in to a new product, so in terms of creatives if I speak it is a process wherein its collaboration between teams with different mindsets: business owners, development, and design to make a product or service that creates an impact, serves the purpose or motivation.

But if sometimes if not done well then It might lead to issues among teams leading into something that’s not beneficial, worth putting efforts, & loss in the time and money invested without getting the proper solution to the problem.

Generating Many Radical, Creative Ideas

Different methods and effective techniques have been crafted for useful braining storming and utilising the creativity of every individual in the team who is participating in the session. I had tried a couple of those over the period and came up with my own, method which I tried and tested out in my courses of brainstorming. I named it Breakup Brainstorming. Let us dig deep, and I will explain the process of doing it.

So before any session, The first thing you need to do is to write down the targets for the brainstorm session:

What do you have to achieve by the end of the course
What are your further goals for the next meeting

So now once that is fixed below are the set-off rules that you must follow to get people to focus on the issue over which you are brainstorming, and also you can work on generating the maximum number of ideas without out a lot of interruptions and by the end of the session you all should feel accomplished

Step-1 Prepare the group

First of all, for any meeting, you need a comfortable environment a quiet place with all the required amenities needed like proper lit room availability of water & stationery. Then schedule appointment with the people who are needed in that session, its not required to call/invite everyone for the meeting as the more the crowd the lot it can get interrupted and disturbed so prepare a list of all the people who are needed to be session like mainly the stakeholders product head and managers from each respective part of the unit. I am saying here to include a diverse group of people because a lot of fresh and different ideas end up being generated than a group of like-minded people.

Now once this is done here in the break-up method comes in the picture so we will have a person who will be commonly recording or taking notes of everyone’s ideas or writes down everyone’s opinions on your whiteboard. Apart from that we will hand over each person with a couple of sticky notes and a pencil to everyone while entering into the session: so every person when he speaks up/ present his/her point or opinion the other person who is next to him )either left or right will take down the record of those points by them, this can be implemented even if your brainstorming over a call or on web. By doing so, the next person is quite attentive towards the one who is speaking and induces him to be much more in focus and part of discussions.

A pro tip — If you really wanna generate tons of ideas by the end of the session then try informing everyone who are gonna be the part of the meeting to think about some random ideas over the problem an hour before the meeting in this way we are creating an individual brainstorm session before the actual one motivating and inspiring people to contribute.

Step-2 Stating the problem

Stating the problem that you want to solve is the most crucial part in any brainstorming session as the problem for which you are finding the solution shud be clear and laid off clearly in everyone’s heads who are participating in the course. So presenting the problem statement should be done very well & clear, if your goal is to “reduce wastage” you could reframe this objective as “provide cleaner alternatives.”

Not only does this method help you present your ideas more appealingly, but it also takes you through an essential process. It can be easy to identify pain points, problem touchpoints, and what consumers don’t want. The next step is to define what they do want — your often-elusive USP (Unique Selling Proposition) and the MVP ( Minimum Viable Product) By turning negative goal statements into positive ones, you’re asking, “What can we do to solve this problem?”

Step-3 Give Direction to the discussion

One of the essential things that most people forget is to take forward the discussion towards the right direction, and that can be effectively done by the team-building activities such as maintaining and sticking to the topic and without being getting diverted. If it’s funnily going to much, then you have to make the discussion dangerous. Role-playing can effectively increase the fun and bring in some fresh ideas. Write the names of various celebrities/characters on your whiteboard, and make a situation (problem statement) for your team and ask each of them how will each of those characters react to the problem statement

For example, would bill gates solve a problem differently than steve jobs?

By imaging how others would have dealt with the issue would bring in a fun factor to the discussion and also keep the people awake while during the discussion

A-Pro Tip — Groups must have time to explore enough ideas that they can consider more than just the first few possibilities that people generate.

Step-4 Summing up the Discussion

The critical step is the conclusion as like with a discussion that goes long and all filled with information sharing; people tend to forget at the same rate as they absorbed in making the whole point of session go vain. So to not let that happens the breakup method again comes into the picture so as mentioned before the corresponding person next to you will take the notes; Now will take his/her notes and will read out the points loud said by you and the person over the whiteboard will verify as he was noting everyone’s points and opinions. After the cross-check by the whiteboard marking person, the person will sit, and the next person continues until everyone's turn is over. In this way, the entire crowd stays attentive and also helps themselves and others to understand each one’s point of view by the end of the brainstorming. This is when you revisit ideas and suggestions. Analyze what would and wouldn’t work; which ideas to push forward and which to discard. Select the best ones and make a plan to implement them.

No idea is a bad idea and where some see trash, others might see gold

All in all, I expect you to experiment with these techniques and share your experience with me in the comments section. I also encourage you to share any other brainstorming techniques that you are effectively using in your company or group.