Individual Idea Generation
How might we help women feel safer and more comfortable while on public transportation?
New Warm-Up Game
My new warm-up game is pretty basic, but its purpose is to come in handy later on during the brainstorming session. The participants each have a piece of paper and a medium for drawing. A random list of words is read off one by one by the session leader. The participants are to draw whatever comes to their minds first after hearing each word, whether it is related to the word or not. These come in handy later on during the brainstorming as they are encouraged to look back at their drawings whenever they “hit a wall” in order to get inspiration and hopefully the ability to continue coming up with ideas.
Session Organization
When searching for participants I found four individuals by the names of Julie, Lauren, Max, and Alec. Unfortunately, Alec lost track of time and was unable to make it to the brainstorming session as he was outside of the cities and couldn’t make it back in time.
However, I was satisfied with the ideas generated during the session. I feel like three people can come up with a lot of interesting and creative ideas in thirty minutes. There might not of been as much variety as there could have been, but the ideas that were put out there were generally well thought out and useful in solving the problem at hand.
Julie Jordan
Julie Jordan is an individual from Chicago, Illinois who identifies as female. She is a freshman at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota and is majoring in Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology in the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences (CFANS).
Lauren Shipman
Lauren Shipman is an individual from Woodbury, Minnesota who identifies as Female. She is a freshman at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota and is majoring in Bio-products and Bio-systems Engineering in the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences.
Max Cvitanov
Max Cvitanov is an individual from Omaha, Nebraska who identifies as male. He is a freshman at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota and is majoring in Retail Merchandising in the College of Design (CDES).
Setting of Brainstorm
The brainstorming session took place in a group study space in Diehl Hall (Biomedical Library). This was an ideal space as it offered minimal distractions from the topic at hand and had walls and a white board for the sorting and organization of our ideas. One downside to this location is that it didn’t completely put the participants in the mindset of someone riding public transit, which could only really be achieved by carrying out the brainstorming session whilst on public transit, which was not a viable option.
Warm-Up Games Used
At the Beginning of the session, the participants and I did some warm-up games in order to feel more comfortable with putting our ideas out into the group. We used the aforementioned game that I made where the participants are given random words and are then asked to draw what first comes to mind. We also played two other games that were played in class, which were continue the story, where each person says a sentence and it goes around to create a story, and word ball, where each person says the first thing that pops into their head that is related to the word said by the person before them.
Brainstorming
There was a total of thirty minutes dedicated to the sole purpose of idea generation. In this time a total of 65 ideas were put on the wall by the three participants. After this, the ideas per minute per person was calculated to be about 0.72 ipm (per person).
Sorting and Voting
The participants sorted their ideas into categories once the thirty minute idea generation was over. They created a total of 11 categories which were titled:
- Practicality
- Wearables
- 9–1–1
- Aspects of Transportation
- Rent-a-_______
- Weapons
- Gifts
- Sound
- Compartments
- Animals
- Diffusing the Situation
They were then asked to vote on which ideas they found most creative and which ideas they found most interesting. Each participant was given four pink stickers to place on the ideas they considered most creative as well as four green stickers to place on the ideas they considered most interesting.
Top Ideas
