Day 28 — Creativity series 4/7: “Random Word Brainstorming”
If you ever wonder, what is the simplest way to run an effective brainstorming exercise? The answer, I’d recommend, is the “Random Word Brainstorming”. This is a method that can be done by 1 person or 100 people, don’t need any props except for pen and paper, and can be hosted remotely or in a meeting room. Best part about it: almost everyone loves the process, and it requires almost no training to do it. So, how does it work?
Pick any random word
Pick a word, preferably noun (person, place, or thing). Once you select a random word, try to think of 4 other keywords that are related to the initial word you pick. For example, if you pick Cheese as your initial word, the 4 related keywords could be: Yellow, Soft, Tasty, and Trap (as in cheese on a mouse trap).
Combine keywords with your problem
You have your 4 keywords. Now it’s time to map it back to the original problem you’re trying to solve by brainstorming with these 4 keywords. For example, your problem statement could be “How can we make the sign up process more efficient?” With these 4 keywords, you can start brainstorm with your team, discuss what a potential idea/ solution could be by Combining the keywords with the problem.
“Cheese” + Sign Up flow
If we use “Cheese” and those keywords above as an example, “yellow” + “sign up” could generate ideas like “proper warning message”, because yellow signs are usually warning signs. And, the keyword “soft” + “sign up” could be an idea of using a soft tone in the application message writing to communicate the required step. Keyword “tasty” + “sign up” could be designing a pretty website as an “eye candy” to attract users to sign up; or simply provide sign up reward to make it a “sweet deal”. What about the keyword “trap”? It could be create proper error prevention in the sign up process.
Self brainstorming with keywords
In case you don’t have any colleague, family, or friends near you to help with the brainstorming process, what can you do to still generate some ideas by yourself? Simple, open your browser, go to Google Image search, type in a keyword you pick, and also some part of the problem statement (e.g. sign up process) and hit enter. The image results based on the words you typed in could give you some pretty amazing inspirational clue to come up with some crazy/wild/brilliant ideas.
Rule of thumb: go for quantity, not quality
As I mentioned in the previous post, the general rule of any brainstorming methods is to go for quantity in the beginning. Whether it’s a crazy idea, stupid idea, lame idea, just write it down. The written ideas serve as another layer of inspirational source, and help the team to build new ideas on top of them.
Do you have any experience using this Random Word brainstorming technique? I’d like to hear what you think.
ABC. Always be clappin’.
