“Wait! I’ve got an idea…”
“… Why don’t we head down that river and see what we find?”
Asking this as a child is evidence of the need to explore, to find, to understand, to develop, to grow. Many modern-day grown-up explorers share the same excitement. From where you stand, looking towards the unknown river downstream implies endless possibilities of potential discovery. You might find something familiar, like a pond. But you might find something unfathomable, like a majestic waterfall, an ancient bridge, or an almost extinct animal! Who knows until you take that leap?
In this set of medium posts discussing design from a business perspective, after having understood the people and the environment which you interact with, and defined what the actual challenge at hand is, it is time to take action. And if you are to take action, it is good to explore your options before committing to any of them. Because jumping blindfolded in that river might not be the best idea. Why not consider alternative ideas to that jump and explore more opportunities instead?
What is ideation?
The first time I told a friend that as a designer I practice ideation, she couldn’t stop laughing. I didn’t get why. But she is a lawyer and better versed with various discourses than me so she soon explained her reaction and got me thinking (and laughing along). You see, ideation, to a psychologist, is a condition where a person has obsessive thoughts ruminating around a specific theme, thinking of it and on it again and again, in cycles, digging deeper into their thoughts, not always for good. But then, my laughter turned into a smile, because I find that this is what designers deliberately do. Designers intentionally ruminate in and around their defined challenge, looking at it through as many different perspectives as possible, combining it with the uncombinable just to mentally get somewhere else and generate a new alternative. This can be a stepping stone to uncover a previously hidden opportunity.
So, for a designer, ideation is the act of deliberatively generating ideas that may or may not lead to a response to the challenge, may or may not be used, but are surely useful as we’ll see further down. Ideation is something we are all familiar with doing: just start considering more than one response to any of the following questions: What might you do tonight? What will you eat tomorrow? Where will you and your family settle down, if you do so? How might your first night on planet Mars be?
So, what are ideas?
It might seem commonplace to think of ideas as mental constructs of future possible realities for a question at hand. But it may be useful to think that ideas are:
Possibilities /Alternatives / Opportunities / Variations expressed in the form of words, images, sketches, sounds, smells, or textures / Feasible or unfeasible propositions on vast subjects or narrow and focused matters / Free: they can cost nothing more than some ink and paper, and a bit of time to generate & formalise. No need to get judgmental / In all of us, no matter our profession, background, education, upbringing, geography, ethnicity, skin color, or social status.
Ideas are not:
Concepts, which tend to be more coherent holistic constructs / Necessarily beautiful / Right or wrong / Singular / Life rafts / One size fits all / Set in stone / Binding / Post-it notes / A privilege for a few individuals to express.
Ideas can be:
Novel / Liberating / Blue-sky / Practical / Impractical / Ready to implement / Far-fetched / Realistic / Thought provoking / Inspiring / Offering unexpected versions of future realities / Based on faith and values.
Why is ideation sought after in the business world today?
Because it’s “good for business”. Ideation is nothing new in the business world. Having a sit-down to think of a new product or service, or new ways to push this ahead is not just the privilege of creative professionals. Organizations have been doing this all along, ever since the first marketplace was in place, getting different people to collaborate till that light bulb lit and then develop and conquer a new market, increase sales, report better numbers in this or that quarter, growing indefinitely. Good! But is it really? (I sense a new post alert to respond to this question, because what “good business” is may need to be redefined in our turbulent times.)
The reason why ideation can have unexpected results after following an empathy and definition phase is that the team ideating has already spent enough time being in contact with the challenge, theme and question of interest. They will have researched, thought, explored, understood and misunderstood aspects before they gather their thoughts in a formulated way.
And of course, as our world changes (meaning us a species and our understanding of the consequences of our actions), even age-old organisations need new possibilities and alternatives in order stay relevant, adjust to the world’s evolving values and adapt to current matters if they are to sustain their existence.
Where do ideas come from?
This is a question most “creatives” have been asked by “non-creatives”. The reality is that being in an idea generative mode is a mindset. So, ideas arrive from everywhere and anywhere. In this mindset, anything is a stimulus. Though there is no magic method to produce ideas, there are things one can do to help them surface. Firstly, one can make sure they are involved in a number of activities and ensure plenty of input from seeing and doing various things on purpose or accidentally. Gaining experiences and deliberately seeking these out. Then, making sense of these activities in the hopes of rattling emotions, questioning one’s preconceptions and even turning one’s world upside down. Remember when Chris Bangle as head of BMW Group sent a team of designers for 6 months in the US in order to generate ideas for automotive concepts?
Then, there is the element of time. How much time are you willing to permit yourself to be in a generative mode? It is often the case that tight deadlines and stiff deliverables make us run towards delivering a response, proposal or solution ASAP. Used to being evaluated by the swiftness and accuracy of our response, our “fight mode” for just-in-time cognitive delivery can overshadow the necessity to spend enough time in a generative mode. And this can be detrimental to the quality of produced work. Generating alternatives for the challenge at hand requires breathing time and although it is understandable that in a business setup there cannot be “all the time in the world” to come up with an idea, it is also unhelpful to think of ideation through the lens of “time is money”. Time spent contemplating alternatives, even if no viable alternative is eventually put to practice, is not wasted. It is time well spent: exploring and wising up. And ideas that eventually survive to become reality cannot be easily quantified and measured on a scale against others. So, you’d need to sleep on them.
An option to generate ideas somewhere in between the two aforementioned modes is an organized brainstorming session. I’m hoping the word sounds familiar as so many people use it these days, and yet so many seem to take it lightly. In this sacred agreed time to be generative, you and your team can let loose, be uncritical of any idea dropped by anyone, document it, build upon it and make sure to remain focused on the subject of investigation. Too many of those taking brainstorming lightly run on unfocused tangents, consider any moment a good time to brainstorm or are unable to wrap it up when the team is exhausted and overwhelmed. To avoid the above, it is good practice to have a well-defined challenge statement in common view and take breaks or even reconvene at a later time in order to recollect thoughts, regain focus or just have some lunch.
Finally, there is the matter of context for deliberately finding ideas. Would anyone expect great ideas to come out of the blue by a single employee stranded in an uninspiring cubicle? I would not necessarily say no, especially if this individual has had plenty of input stimuli in their work and personal life. Would anyone expect to generate great ideas only by surfing the internet, exposed to the monoculture created by algorithms? How would one’s ideas be any different from anyone else’s? Again, I would not necessarily say no, as the internet surfer may consciously or unconsciously connect their online search results with IRL experiences and learnings, their involvement with communities and even behaviors evident in the dark web. Why not? Would anyone expect ideas to be generated unconsciously? I wouldn’t say no either, because I myself have talked in my sleep, seen dreams and woken up to jot them down. So, when resting, after having put a lot of energy in thinking and ruminating around a question, can be a great moment to be generative. And why not deliberately use AI and such tools to generate initial ideas, upon which we humans can build upon and generate new thoughts? Who is to stop us doing so?
Where and how to ideate?
Ideation can happen anywhere. In a meeting room, on a desk, in the forest, on a boat, in a sauna. By a bedside table, just after you’ve fallen asleep, at the gym or at the kafenio.
Since such is the variety of locations it may spontaneously take place, it is important for anyone to be prepared to document ideas that emerge. Ideas must not just stay vocal. Voice is a breeze carrying information which, when caught in strong crosswinds, dissolves. Don’t let precious ideas dissolve, regardless of whether they are good and insightful or not. Make a habit of putting them down on paper or a digital space. Carry around a small notebook or download an app on your smartphone. It makes such a difference in the progress of your and your team’s thinking. Later, revisit ideas, amend them, develop them, see them with fresh eyes in excitement or flush them down the toilet, promising never to consider them ever again because they now seem senseless.
No matter what, the documented ideas have served their purpose: they have captured your once abstract foggy inner thoughts, given them their first shape in words, sketches or otherwise, and made them shareable. Remember to generate them with others — definitely your immediate colleagues. Ideation is much harder done in isolation, let alone less fun.
A lot of ideas — or good ideas?
Quantity over quality they say… Let’s think about it. There is probably a reason you want to be generative: to make the best possible decision, create something new or head down that river. In the end, you’ll probably be formally proposing one or two solid alternatives as the output of your thinking. So, if you had created two ideas, without exploring more alternatives that would wise you up on the challenge, you’d have to propose these two ideas, now turned into proposals. But can you be sure that these two ideas are your best options? How will you ever know if you don’t explore other opportunities and put them in paper in order to see how they look and feel? And once you’ve started, why stop? Ideally, you could generate 100 alternative responses to your question and challenge statement. Literally ruminating around it before even starting to consider prioritizing ideas, consolidating them and throwing many of them out of the window. The 100 ideas, out of which most will not survive your critique later on, will have made you an experienced and wise explorer of your brief. They will have been generated one by one, one influenced by the other and one stepping on another. Thus, you will have been exposed to 100 different alternatives of your subject and this newly attained wisdom stemming from the practice of deep thinking and shifting perspectives allows you to tell the useful from the less useful ideas. And thus be lead to a more solid decision, a more relevant product or service or a few more options for heading down that river.
So, what would you do when staring at that river? Would you dive in, head first? Would you pull out a pen & paper to start jotting down options? Or is it just a really hot day, and the cool water temperature is asking for your gentle submersion? So many options to consider, before committing to any of them…
This text is the fourth in a series of five articles discussing the design process with a business outlook, focusing on the respective Design Thinking steps. You will find the links to the rest below as they are being created.
Intro: “Thinking Design”
Step 1 — [empathize]:
Step 2 — [define]:
Step 4 — [prototype]:
Step 5 — [test]:
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