Brainstorming vs Debate
What I thought I was doing vs what was really happening?
We all have heard of Brainstorming and how effective it is and as M.Des student, I hear it more often and see it in every article, blogs, social media posts, lectures and even I used in the various projects in the recent times.
The first Brainstorming session
I worked with 5 others for a Product Design project during my 1st semester, it was my first project working with a team as a Designer and it was chaos. We all were from a different region, backgrounds and specialization.
We all gathered around and discussed our ideas, inputs that can be implemented in the project. Gradually it became a debate and arguments started to heat up, raised voices, a lot of disagreements, disappointed faces and it became complete chaos. I used to think it’s because of the ego, dominance, cultural diversity… but I understood what went wrong months later only.
So, what went wrong?
Everyone wanted to share their valuable inputs and we consider our ideas good(just a human after all), but how to make sure it is good? how to determine whose idea is good and which one to implement, without any hard feeling and bias?
A small story from a recent fruitful experience
A good facilitator
I attended a workshop conducted by an Alumni from my college, Aditi Chansoria who worked with Microsoft, UX Reactor and currently working as a Lead Designer at Infinitives. She took the role of facilitator and helped us understand the difference between Brainstorming and Debate.
Choosing the right problem
We were divided into a team of 5 and she(Aditi) made sure we worked with people we never worked before. The timer was set for 15 mins and we were told to come with a problem we would like to solve. Our team wrote the problems we face in our daily life and we all discussed one by one and finally chose a problem to solve. Once we narrowed the problem, we were told to create an actionable statement starting with “How might we”
Once the problem statement is done, the timer started again for 30 mins and now we were told not to talk with anyone in your team and write all the problems we face because of this problem (written in green sticky notes) and what are the problems occurring because of this problem(written in red sticky notes). Once we wrote it, the sticky notes were handed anonymously to the facilitator and it was stuck on the board for everyone to look into.
We were provided with 4 small sticky dots individually to all the members of the group, which we can stick on the problems we consider as a potential problem. Once it is done, we took the notes which had more than 1 dot and grouped it. Now we got the potential problems causing the problem to happen which we all agreed as a team together without any chaos.
The timer starts again for 30 mins, individually we wrote ideas/solutions for “our problem” and it was stuck anonymously on the wall by the facilitator. We came around with 24 ideas and we again used the sticky dots method to sort down the potential solutions for our problem.
She told us to stick the ideas which have the number of dots to the Impact vs Effort graph. We worked as a team together and narrowed down the best possible solution which takes less effort and more impact without any heated argument, ego, clash and bias.
My Insight from the experience
For a successful brainstorming session, a good facilitator is all it takes. We all have read about brainstorming sessions, but we lack the experience on how to conduct it successfully. I was able to work with a team of 5 and we were able to sort down problems and solutions without any problem and everyone was able to contribute and voice out.
“Without a good leader, even a team of greatest minds is useless as a ventilated condom”
If you had a similar experience and agree with my story, kindly please let know with a response, would help me understand and write better.
