Design Thinking : Ideation

During the third stage of the Design Thinking process, designers are ready to start generating ideas. You’ve grown to understand your users and their needs in the Empathise stage, and you’ve analysed and synthesised your observations in the Define stage, and ended up with a human-centered problem statement. With this solid background, you and your team members can start to "think outside the box" to identify new solutions to the problem statement you’ve created, and you can start to look for alternative ways of viewing the problem.

1. Ideate

2. Contents What is Ideating ? The role of ideation Ways to Ideate ? What to do when there’s a difference in opinion? 2

3. 1. What is Ideating? 3

4. What is Ideating? Ideation is the process where you generate ideas and solutions through sessions such as  Sketching , Prototyping,  Brainstorming ,  Brainwriting ,  Worst Possible Idea , and a wealth of other  ideation  techniques. Ideation is also the third stage in the  Design Thinking  process. Ideation Will Help You: 4

5. Ideation Will Help You: Ask the right questions and innovate with a strong focus on your users, their needs, and your insights about them. Step beyond the obvious solutions and therefore increase the  innovation  potential of your solution. Bring together perspectives and strengths of your team members. Uncover unexpected areas of innovation. Create volume and variety in your innovation options. Get obvious solutions out of your heads, and drive your team beyond them. 5

6. “Ideation is the mode of the design process in which you concentrate on idea generation. Mentally it represents a process of ‘going wide’ in terms of concepts and outcomes. Ideation provides both the fuel and also the source material for building prototypes and getting innovative solutions into the hands of your users.”  – D.school , An Introduction to Design Thinking PROCESS GUIDE 6

7. 2. The role of Ideation 7

8. The role of Ideation Contrary to the conventional wisdom that too many ideas leave you confused, directionless, or unable to make a decision, your goal here should be quantity not quality.  And here is the best part: no idea is a bad idea. Go after weird, unusual ideas instead of common sense solutions. Do you know how many indispensable innovations that you can’t imagine life without have come from unusual, nonsensical, unreasonable, bold, impossible ideas?  8

9. It sounds counterintuitive and counterproductive but in Design Thinking this is the zone of endless creative possibilities. It is better to have a surplus of ideas than to have to just enough ideas. A diversity of ideas will bring about the best, most creative and appropriate solution.  During Ideation you release your mind from the mentality of “finding a right solution”, get the obvious solution out of the way, and embrace the broadest possibilities available to you through this process. Ideation is about exploring all varieties of ideas by multiple voices in the team. You get to ask the right questions and discover unexpected areas of innovation. 9

10. 10 Ideation comprises both divergent and convergent thinking.  Divergent  thinking is creating and generating numerous choices.  Convergent  thinking is narrowing down and zeroing in on a handful of very specific choices that are most likely to solve the problem. Convergent thinking involves synthesis. Convergent thinking is also analytical.  Convergent and divergent thinking is a continuous process through out the ideation stage and the whole problem solving process of Design Thinking. The team may discover that it needs to go back and do more research in order to redefine the problem again. It is a process that is always ongoing. Divergent and Convergent Thinking

11. 3. Ways to Ideate 11

12. Tools for Idea generation There are many tools for ideation. The most common being  brainstorming Brainstorming How might we? Body storming  Game storming Mind Maps Analogous Inspiration Sketchboards We’ll be focusing on Brainstorming, How might we?, Mind Maps, and Analogous Inspiration. 12

13. Brainstorming 13

14. 14 Conventional group problem solving can often be undermined by  unhelpful group behavior  . And while it's important to start with a  structured, analytical process  when solving problems, this can lead a group to develop limited and unimaginative ideas. By contrast, brainstorming provides a free and open environment that encourages everyone to participate. Quirky ideas are welcomed and built upon, and all participants are encouraged to contribute fully, helping them develop a rich array of creative solutions. Power of Brainstorming

15. 15 When used during problem solving, brainstorming brings team members' diverse experience into play. It increases the richness of ideas explored, which means that you can often find better solutions to the problems that you face. It can also help you get buy-in from team members for the solution chosen – after all, they're likely to be more committed to an approach if they were involved in developing it. What's more, because brainstorming is fun, it helps team members bond, as they solve problems in a positive, rewarding environment. While brainstorming can be effective, it's important to approach it with an open mind and a spirit of non-judgment. If you don't do this, people "clam up," the number and quality of ideas plummets, and morale can suffer.

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17. In two or three columns Yellow Is the color of gold, butter and ripe lemons. In the spectrum of visible light, yellow is found between green and orange. Blue Is the colour of the clear sky and the deep sea. It is located between violet and green on the optical spectrum. Red Is the color of blood, and because of this it has historically been associated with sacrifice, danger and courage. 17

18. Mind Mapping 18

19. 19 A mind map is a tool for the brain that captures the thinking that goes on inside your head. Mind mapping helps you think, collect knowledge, remember and create ideas. Most likely it will make you a better thinker. Mind maps can be created in many different ways, but they share the same basics Mind Mapping

20. Central theme A central theme is placed in the centre of a blank page. This is the title, the subject, a problem or just a thought. When thinking of something images automatically take form in your head. For example the image of a “ colorful bunch of balloons” when thinking of “birthday”. . Basics of Mind Mapping 20

21. 21 Associations From the central theme associations radiate out. Associations directly from the central theme are called first level associations. Then second level associations are created, third level and so on. The brain thinks by imagination and association. When associations are created, connections are made. These connections are essential for remembering and thinking. Curved Lines Associations are often drawn as curved lines. They are  curved rather than straight, because the brain likes curves.

22. 22 Keywords Mind maps summarize information. Instead of sentences, ideally only single keywords are used. A single word per association gives more freedom, creativity and clarity. Colour and Images The use of color is important in the mind map. Research shows that people who use color and images in their imagination, when they are learning, are better in remembering than those who don’t.

23. Analogous Inspiration 23

24. 24 Hospital emergency rooms have been inspired by F1 pit stop crews. Henry Ford's assembly line was inspired by observing systems within slaughterhouses and grain warehouses. Executives, artists, writers and all kinds of other creative professionals have relied on creating  analogies  as a powerful tool for empathising with audiences and communicating and sparking ideas. An analogy is a comparison between two things—for instance, a comparison of a heart to a pump. We communicate in analogies all the time, as they allow us to express our ideas or to explain complex matters in an understandable and motivating way . Analogous Inspiration

25. 25 The  ideation  technique of using analogies goes by many names. Essentially, it all boils down to exploring  unrelated  concepts for an insight, which you can apply to your own problem's context. These insights on how principles or characteristics exist within one context may help inform how to reshape these principles and solutions within a different context. Purposely stoking ideation teams to dig for analogies gets them thinking about the attributes of the elements they are working on in a different way. It will help the team seek inspiration in problem solving, reconfigure the design problem and come up with unconventional solutions.

26. 4. When there is a difference in opinion 26

27. 27 How to pick an idea when opinions differ? Take pieces of paper Ask each member to score each idea on a scale of 1-5 Take everyone’s score and select the idea with the highest score Difference in opinion