Step up your ideation game with Brainwriting

by Ayesha Sayed with RosevilleUX

When it comes to innovation, brainstorming is the poster child of ideation techniques. It is so popular that it’s almost synonymous with the concept of idea generation. It has served as a helpful tool to industries and organizations, big and small, since 1939. However, there are quite a few limitations associated with traditional brainstorming techniques. These problems are mainly related to ‘group behavior’ in an organizational setting. For instance, brainstorming sessions are biased towards the loudest and most authoritative voices in the room, creating an environment where personalities are more important than the ideas themselves. Even with an all-ideas-are-welcome attitude, participants in a brainstorming session are not immune to issues like conformity pressure and evaluation apprehension. This often results in generation of less ideas, and more importantly, less diverse ideas, defeating the very purpose of an ideation session.

Fortunately, there is an emerging technique that doesn’t only solve the conformity crisis but also helps generate a large number of ideas within a short amount of time. This ideation technique is referred to as brainwriting, also known as the 6–3–5 technique, that involves 6 participants, writing 3 ideas each, in 5 minute time blocks.

What is brainwriting?

Brainwriting is brainstorming’s quiet cousin, if you will. The brainwriting process involves a group generating ideas as individuals which are then passed onto the next person who uses them as a trigger for their own ideas. Think of it like the game of Telephone. Usually, this activity is done with a minimum of 5–6 people. Although, with some modifications, it can be carried out with much larger groups. For an in-person session, it can be conducted with basic tools like paper, pen, sticky notes and a time tracking device.

Brainwriting can also be easily and effectively executed in remote sessions using simple collaboration tools. I recently facilitated a remote brainwriting workshop with the help of an online whiteboarding platform called Mural.

How to do brainwriting?

• Start with a good problem statement — broad enough for creative freedom and narrow enough to make it manageable.
• Get a moderator (with a timer device) and around 6 participants (each with a sheet of paper and a pen).
• Divide the entire activity into 5 sessions. Each session is about 5 minutes long.
• For the first session, each person comes up with 3 different ideas as possible solutions for the given problem statement.
• In session 2, each person passes their sheet of ideas to the next person (say clockwise). Participants read the ideas and either use it as a stimulus for a new idea, modify that idea, or choose to come up with a completely new one.
• Repeat this process of passing the sheet following the same instructions as above until each participant has written on each sheet. (At this point, the group has generated 108 ideas in around 30 mins!)
• Lastly, the group gets to choose the best Ideas from the lot by using a dot voting system.

Why use brainwriting?

There are plenty of benefits to this method compared to a traditional brainstorming session:

• Everyone is writing down ideas at the same time, so lots of ideas are generated simultaneously.
• Since people are using a previous person’s idea as a base for their own idea, the result is usually more refined with a better set of ideas.
• There is hardly any verbal interaction during the sessions, so it’s not a very strenuous activity.
• Since, everyone is privately writing their ideas, there’s no social pressure and no fear of criticism while coming up with them.
• Usually, in a verbal brainstorming session, the louder individuals are at the forefront and the introverts are hesitant to express their ideas. Here everyone gets a fair chance without any hierarchy.

When to use brainwriting

As we just saw there are a lot of instances where brainwriting can easily be incorporated for generating ideas:

• When you have too large a group and individual interactions are not possible.
• When there are quiet people in the group who usually don’t feel comfortable putting their ideas forward.
• Conversely, when there are strong personalities in a group and you want to let the ideas speak for themselves.
• When time is limited, a lot can be accomplished effectively in a small frame of time with brainwriting.
• It is very easy to implement even with less experienced moderators.

When not to use brainwriting

Despite having so many advantages, there are a few instances where you would want to avoid using brainwriting:

• When you have a very small group, say 1–2 people, it’s not as effective as with larger groups.
• When it’s difficult to express ideas in writing and more hands-on ideation is required.
• When you are handling a complex project and deeper collaboration is needed.
• Situations where you want people to talk about their thinking process in order to access their verbal communication skills.

Conclusion

Brainwriting might not be a one-size-fits-all solution for every ideation problem out there, but it is one of the simplest and most effective ways to generate tons of ideas in a short amount of time. It will help create an inclusive environment where ideas have a chance to emerge and grow.