SEED Guide

Ideating:  Tools

Tasks and Steps

A collection of tools at Creating Minds:

http://creatingminds.org/tools/tools_ideation.htm

“The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.”

- Linus Pauling, two-time Nobel Prize winning scientist

Brain Drain

1. In this guided form of brainstorming, the team focuses on their How might we…? question, while each member works individually, quickly, and silently to generate ten new ideas that respond to the question.

2. Each idea should be separate, so that they can be moved around later. Sticky notes can be helpful but pieces of paper on a table can also work and are more readily recycled.

3. Remember to apply the SEED guidelines for divergence.

Brainwriting

Bruchatz, Christian, Robert Fischer, and Janine Stelzer, A Workbook for Academics and Researchers in Higher Education, p. 47.

1. In a faster and more efficient version of brainstorming, like the Brain Drain, for Brainwriting each team member works separately and in silence. Note that this allows the introverts on the team to participate equally.

2. All the members of the team should participate in the writing circle to diversify the results. Papers will circulate clockwise.

3. You begin by choosing just ONE idea to write at the top of your paper. Then pass your paper to the next person in the circle and receive another with your neighbor’s idea. Read for inspiration and write down your next idea, adapted to your neighbor’s idea. This process is repeated until each participant has contributed to the development of each original idea.

4. Post all of the papers visibly for analysis to select the best ideas.

How would [person or organization] solve it?

1. Using these prompts and working individually, add three new ideas:

• How would Ursula von der Leyen solve it?

• How would Cristiano Ronaldo solve it?

• How would your mom/dad/grandmother solve it?

2. Quickly use dot-voting to select out the helpful ideas that you would like to prototype.

Yes, and...

1. Build on ideas with “Yes, and” ideation

2. Work individually to attach a separate comment in the “Yes, and...” format to each existing idea

3. Note that by forcing yourself to say yes to each idea, you could be contemplating the impossible, which could lead to a lot of fun. Enjoy!

Kill your Idea

Bruchatz, Christian, Robert Fischer, and Janine Stelzer, A Workbook for Academics and Researchers in Higher Education,  p. 50-53

1. In true design thinking mode, the team should be eager to expose weak points of their idea(s). This practice will lead to frequent (re-)iteration and opportunities for improvement. Killing your idea works first on the constraints for desirability, feasibility, and viability from two different perspectives: the best AND the worst case scenario.

2. For the best case scenario:

➢     What must happen so that the users are satisfied?

➢     What must happen so that our idea becomes a full success?

➢     What must happen so that everyone wants to use our idea?

3.   For the worst case scenario:

➢     What must happen so that the users complain?

➢     What must happen so that our idea fails?

➢     What must happen so that no one wants to use our idea anymore?

4. Confronting these two perspectives will reveal the gaps that the team may have not yet perceived! A final approach really aims at total destruction and some find it the most exciting because these questions together make a potent tool.

➢     Who are potential opponents?

➢     Our idea falls apart when our opponent manages to...

➢     What is our strategy, when this scenario occurs?

➢     Then our idea is worth nothing, because...

5. Work only on the ideas you fail to kill.

Matrix Scale

Bruchatz, Christian, Robert Fischer, and Janine Stelzer, A Workbook for Academics and Researchers in Higher Education,  p. 58

1. To help you rank your ideas, the team must first rank the importance of each of these criteria for their idea:

➢     Desirability: the level of consumer acceptance and engagement with the idea.

➢     Alignment: how well the idea aligns with the organization's core concept or values.

➢     Competency: the idea/product's competitiveness on the market.

➢     Cost: the financial investment needed to adopt the new idea.

➢     Viability: the practical applicability of the idea in real-life scenarios.

2. Then the fun begins as the team decides on a sliding scale that considers their idea base on three (3) characteristics:

➢     User Value from a flea/midge bite to a shark attack

➢     Scalability from Robinson Crusoe to climate change

➢     Feasibility from hammer and nail to the jet engine

3. The team can personalize the sliding scale, include other criteria, or even divide them or split up the criteria. The top three ideas based on this ranking activity should be candidates for prototyping.

Send a Text

Bruchatz, Christian, Robert Fischer, and Janine Stelzer, A Workbook for Academics and Researchers in Higher Education,  p. 60-61

1. Originally called Send a Postcard, this is now moving on from snail mail. The point is to be succinct and clear so that someone who knows absolutely nothing about the project will feel enlightened. Originally this was to be sent to your grandmother. We do not want to imply that grandmothers are less in-the-know.

2. Avoid specific terminology and describe two parts:
a clear problem AND a clear plan

3. Aim for a short message without too many details

4. Write the texts individually then bring your drafts together to share, compare, and create ONE final version.

Affinity diagrams for ideation

1. Gather all the ideas into Affinity Diagrams or Clusters to make sense of your insights from ideation.

2. The groups or themes represented in each cluster should be based on their relationships.

3. Communicate the meaning of each cluster with a relevant title.

4. Examine the results to draw conclusions that will help you decide what to prototype in the next design thinking step.

Dot-Voting

1. Each person on the team gets three votes, represented by dots or checks

2. Review the team criteria for making your choices. For example, can you use all of your votes on just one idea? Must the three votes be distributed across the board? Which ideas are up for election?

3. One at a time, each person distributes their three votes but the team can opt to look away for increased anonymity.

4. Identify the top choice or new combination of top choices to develop your prototype.

5. As a convenient way to make fast decisions, dot-voting may be used in other moments of convergence.