Think about a time you have had a good experience with brainstorming and a time you have had a bad experience with it. Using the readings, explain what you think went well and what didn’t go well in those experiences. Be Specific!!!
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Xinlu Tong
November 11, 2012 at 10:18 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
The points in the passage about ways to kill a brainstorm can be classified into two kinds: the ways that deliberately control the brainstorming session and the ways that involve some authorities in it. The first one will break the atmosphere of brainstorming and let people feel uncomfortable, while the second one will let people other than authorities feel pressure and don’t dare to speak. Brainstorming should be, in my opinion, improvisational and casual. People can chat like usual, and come up with some ideas one by one. The aim of brainstorming is to combine minds of several people into one, which will cause that one plus one is greater than two rather than that one plus one equals two. So it is important to eliminate communication gaps between people.
When I discuss the idea with other team members for our project of this course, we had great experience of brainstorming. That’s because we don’t have authorities like team leader or expertise. Although I know more about language learning than others, which is the design subject of our project, I didn’t give any comment when others raised some ideas that are against my experience. And some of them actually turned out to be great ideas.
Another time is when I tried to find a good subject for our course project with team members. We came up with many ideas, but many of those just died out after that. Although we didn’t inhibit silly ideas, I think most of us, including the speaker himself, thought that was a silly idea. And we didn’t number the ideas, so we forgot many of them later when we tried to agree upon one idea.
Jared Young
November 12, 2012 at 8:22 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
At work, we often have meetings where we brainstorm ideas on how to implement or develop a certain design in
software. These design meetings often go well because they follow a structure in which everyone has a chance to
voice their ideas and raise uncertainties if there are any. This is done openly and not in a round robin fashion,
as described in the article. There is usually a team leader present who moderates the flow of the brainstorming
discussion. This is often to the benefit of the meeting as people can sometimes go too much off topic;
at the same time a good team leader can maintain a relaxing atmosphere in which people are
comfortable to express their ideas. The team leader will listen to everyone’s input and tries understand their
train of logic by writing or drawing out the logic on a white board. This helps members of the team understand
and improve on eachothers ideas and may help members come up new ideas as well. Writing out ideas
on the board is beneficial in keeping track of everyone’s ideas. Sometimes there are moments of
silence, in which everyone in the meeting is actively thinking of ideas. If the silence extends
for a long period of time, the team leader may propose to postpone the current meeting for a later time when
everyone can provide more developed ideas. This is beneficial for time efficiency and allows for ideas to come
naturally instead of having to be created on the spot (this is not always a bad thing, however).
One time I had a meeting with a graphic designer where we were discussing the design for a software interface.
The graphic designer did not understand the software, and I was not familiar with the graphical assets or delivery
process that was to be used. The goal of the meeting was to come to an understanding of exactly what graphic assets
the software needed in order to properly produce the required interface. The problem is that both parties did not
fully understand the requirements of the software, nor was there a manager or team leader present to provide over site
of the meeting. Only the respective experts were present (software, graphics), and nobody with a high level
understanding of the project was there to add input. What ended up happening was that after the meeting, we met
with the project manager who then notified us that the ideas we discussed did not match the software design
requirements. Much time was wasted and we had to review the graphic assets all over again.
Karen
November 12, 2012 at 11:34 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
The type of brainstorming I usually engage in appears to differ from what is discussed in the articles. I have not experienced an organized brainstorming session beyond what is required in courses. Usually my brainstorming is either VERY focused (e.g., thinking of a method to manipulate a certain variable) or very general (e.g., coming up with a piece of artwork that inspires thought in some way). I usually brainstorm alone and find that it works best for me this way, whereas the articles seem to be geared towards holding successful group brainstorming sessions. I don’t think that the rules outlined in the articles work well for me. For instance, the article on “7 secrets” claims that morning meetings are the best and that 3-10 participants should take part. I personally feel that 10 is too many people, but I do agree that in group sessions “playful rules” are needed, especially to prevent issues like groupthink. Also I would personally be HORRIBLE at a morning meeting (as I am in morning classes), and I know some others who would be too. I think that the after midnight time is really optimal for creativity for perhaps 1/4 of the population.
I also feel like large group meetings aren’t ideal when introverts or shy people are involved. Thus I like the approach of “giving everybody a turn” even though the article labels it as “no-no”–I find that this works well during lab meetings and classes, as some people are afraid to speak up even though they may have good ideas. I do not know if this is the same for others, but I find that my creativity is stifled when I am with other people. I sometimes find myself anchoring my ideas to others’ ideas. I also find myself worrying about how stupid my ideas might be, and how stupid I sound, which takes away from actual brainstorming. My ideal approach for group brainstorming would probably be to have everyone brainstorm individually first, then bring their ideas to the group brainstorming session, during which people could bounce their ideas off of each other. I wonder if the principles in these articles have been tested and whom they have been tested on. Do these principles mainly apply to designers at firms like Ideo?
Sreevatsa Sreeraman
November 12, 2012 at 9:16 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Most of the good experiences I had in Brainstorming sessions was during Agile Retrospectives. To explain a little about retrospectives, an agile team gets together after each iteration or release and retrospects about things that went good and things that could have gone better. In these sessions, the facilitator would hand out post-it notes to all participants and ask them to think about the ideas for making the next release or iteration better. This brought out many ideas out because, each person had a certain amount of time thinking for herself and write down these ideas without being influenced or judged by somebody. At the end of this thinking time, the facilitator puts these post-it notes on a whiteboard and groups similar ideas. Now, the participants have a limited number of votes on which idea groups they want to discuss about. This was particularly useful because, even though this process is democratic, it often turned out that some ideas where favored by most of the people and time would be prioritized for the discussion, rather than going through each and every idea one by one
Some of the principles of good brainstorming I observed in retrospectives was the “make the space remember”, where the post-it notes are put up on a whiteboard and grouped, and the “stretch your mental muscles”, where there is a small amount of time reserved in each retrospective for remembering the significant events that occurred during the iteration or release, so that the participants start thinking about what could be done better.
I can think of another principle, which is close to “Let the Boss speak first” and “Ask the experts only”, that can make or break the brainstorming sessions. The principle is that, there should be no repercussions to the participants when they come up with ideas. This is the kind of comfort level, that I have seen bring out some great ideas in brainstorming, In one of the brainstorming sessions I was present at a client site, it was a disastrous session, since the team did not have the heart in it and was being done for the benefit of the management. I was pretty sure that, some crazy idea would have been reported and held against the proposer. So, ideas will only be generated if the participants are comfortable and motivated to be the part of the session. In my opinion, this is the most important requirement of brainstorming.
Chuxiong Wu
November 12, 2012 at 11:59 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Personally, I think there are two main rules addressed in the reading materials: one of the rules is not let people to set the limit to innovations; another is the rule to encourage innovations. For the rule that not to set limit to innovations, the six strategies reveal, in an opposite way, that upper authorities will confine the domain of the brainstorm; team will feel pressure from the boss which their speak will be reconsidered to satisfied authorities’ goals. In another word, the brainstorm should be casual and has a relaxing environment. Also, the session aims to gather information from members. I believe every team members should share their thoughts appropriately in the brainstorm sessions without critique. Thus, I think free ideas’ communication is the core rule to collect sparks from wild ideas.
I have a great brainstorm experience in the first group meeting for the project design. It has a casual atmosphere that everyone in the group participated the session and expressed their ideas. No pressure from group members. Additionally, we respected others’ thoughts. We didn’t critique ideas until everyone finished their talk. It helps us to fully understand others, note the ideas and supplement the design requirements.
However, some sessions didn’t provided enough resources to help the project. I think primary reason is some background research had been delayed. For our project, brainstorm ideas based on an online survey and several interviews. So each member should finish background research and warm up ideas before session. Although, team could present breakdowns, it was incomplete. Thus, the result had negative affected on our further brainstorming for refine design question.
Armando P.
November 13, 2012 at 12:31 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
When I was in high school my friends and I decided to make a movie for fun. Brainstorming ideas for the movie was an extremely pleasant and productive experience. For one thing, we had focus; we wanted to write a comedy. We also brainstormed together from the very beginning, there was very little ideation done individually. Since we were all friends no one was afraid to say crazy ideas. We were definitely not expert movie writers which resulted in a rather original plot. Finally because we were doing the movie for fun, there was no figure of authority during the brainstorming sessions which meant there was less pressure to be productive or meet any sort of deadline.
In middle school I was in a video-making class. For one of our assignments we had to make a video montage, so my group and I had a brainstorming session to come up with ideas for the video. Several things prevent the session from generating any good ideas. Several of the group members were “popular” kids, so it created an awkward dynamic where not everyone felt comfortable expressing their ideas since they did not want to look dumb. Additionally, because the project was for a class and there was not a lot of time, there was a lot pressure to only suggest “good” ideas. In the end we produced the most boring video I have ever seen.
Parul Seth
November 13, 2012 at 12:52 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Brainstorming is an essential tool for ideation. It helps in generation of innovative solutions enriched by new perspectives through collaboration in a team. At times individual brainstorming is preferred by many simply because some people like to work alone (I have intermittently been a member of this group). The social nature of group brainstorming is both a blessing and a curse. The ideal form of brainstorming is that which maximizes the individuals’ capabilities as a whole in a group to come up with ideas that are exponential in nature to cater a problem. The one which negates creativity by inducing dullness and dictatorship is harmful. Another sensitive area is participation, giving turns to speak hampers the flow; additionally, presence of free-riders (those who willingly don’t participate) lowers down the efficiency of the synergy at play.
I have witnessed brainstorming from both sides of the coins at several occasions. For the purpose of continuity I will highlight both the kinds of experiences in the development of the same product.
The Bad:
This was one of the preliminary brainstorming sessions that we had for the product’s requirements phase. It was obvious that we had no clear path to take and were mostly new to the domain of work. To top it all the problem statement and expectations were fuzzy and the team had different experience level with the technology. The large part of the session was dedicated to the technical details and we missed on figuring out real solutions to the problem. The effort and time was wasted and all we had at end was few terrified individuals who thought they cannot code and zero requirements for the project, we sadly could not even come up with the technical ones.
The Good:
With lessons from the previous session (and a series of shared emails) this time the team became adamant to make good use of time by having a focused approach. We thought of using ideas from the future workshops process of requirement gathering. Each person came up with five amazing metaphors for the product. The metaphors were engaging and introduced vigor for creation of new ideas, even those who were not technically sound were now fully involved in the process. After collecting, grouping and sieving the ideas the wishful futures were bottled down to doable features. The whole process fueled the team with enthusiasm and will to innovate and ideate. During this session we also thought of inviting the client to participate in the process for the second phase, and we did. That was a great team decision!
The Beautiful:
In summary, a well-cooked brainstorming session should involve lots of enthusiasm; a pinch of control simmered by playfulness, spiced by efficient participation, and should be kept in a focused bowl of “user need” with an open lid for the creative juices to keep flowing in and out.
Pushkar
November 13, 2012 at 1:07 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
We once had a brainstorming session in our team to discuss about the implementation of a feature that was requested by a few of our customers. It had to be implemented in the most efficient way possible, in terms of computing time and without interfering with the functioning of existing features in the system. The goal of the brainstorming session was very clear. This helped in streamlining the discussion and people did not deviate from the main topic. I have generally noticed that in discussions that do not have a proper statement of the problem at hand (‘sharpen the focus’ principle), people often tend to digress from the main topic.
One reason why this discussion was good experience was that, all the team members knew the topic of discussion well before the meeting. We were provided with enough time to do some background study of the system and the requested enhancement. In fact I had prepared a partial solution to the problem being discussed even before the meeting. Another member of my team had got some details regarding a similar feature that was implemented by another team within our organization. This helped a lot in formulating new ideas (‘Stretch your mental muscles’ principle). As I had a partial solution, many of my team mates suggested alternate solutions using the idea I suggested. Within an hour of discussion, we could easily narrow down on the solution and we came up with the implementation plan as well. Also the discussion room had 3 big white boards which helped quite a lot. During the brainstorming session, people wrote down their ideas on it, so that they would not forget to mention or discuss about it later. I feel that this was another reason for the discussion to be successful (‘make the space remember’).
For a project in one of the courses I had taken earlier, I had a brainstorming session with my team mates. It was our first discussion and none of us had prepared well for it. The main problem was that we did not have a well-defined goal for the discussion. Our ultimate goal was to build a system to support real time simultaneous editing of documents by multiple users over the network. We started the discussion without prior knowledge in that area and without thinking about the subtasks and the initial goal of the project. Due to this, there was no proper direction for the discussion. Also since none of us had prepared for it and we would stop discussing and start reading through study material.
Also, during the discussion, we were trying to write down every minute detail of all possible solutions to the problem, along with detailed diagrams. This was time consuming and very distracting (‘write down everything’). I felt that it would have been better if we had just taken short notes rather than the entire idea.
Anshu Singh
November 13, 2012 at 2:08 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
In my view brainstorming is a powerful technique to fire up creativity, allow flow of thoughts, challenge ideas, and raise the bar of expectation from a team. Like Tom Kelly expresses, and which I agree with, no ideation process should happen in solitude but with solidarity, in a group. Especially for projects where designing is all user centered and done with user in mind, almost every member should bring a unique perspective to the table. Tough part about brainstorming session with no coordinator could be fluency and flexibility. However these factors can be most the beneficial if a team knows how to coordinate amongst them. Like in our team there is enough flexibility and fluency, we respect each others idea, critique them where needed, and build upon one another’s idea or also add to it. Personally I liked IDEOs strategy of “Getting Physical”, though this does not directly apply to our project but in the sense, we are sort of adopting this ideology of getting our thoughts to compare with competitors product.
To be very honest, as far as brainstorming session with my project group is concerned, I haven’t had any bad experience. On the contrary it turned out be very productive. However like article points out, when higher authorities start talking about their ideas, it’s hard for subordinates to bring up their ideas. So yes indeed, bosses should stay out of this (brainstorming) business at least. In the same light, when you bring in an expert in the field, it’s rare that amateur will speak up. However that is where innovation gets hampered. In most probability an expert will think in a box and a naïve will think out of the box.
In short brainstorming sessions should be free flowing and not constrained by leaders, managers, note taking, patterns, and structures etc. This is the subtle difference between discussions and brainstorming sessions.
Timothy Young
November 13, 2012 at 3:27 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
With regards to experts, I think if the brainstorm session breeds a good environment for accepting all perspectives. While more inexperienced individuals may have less knowledge and direction than those more familiar, they can still provide valuable insight that should not be neglected. In fact, a true expert would be capable of coaching a newcomer in more properly expressing their ideas to contribute to the overall goal of the brainstorming session. I think as long as the group has a tangible and directed goal, the brainstorm session can be accepting of most ideas as there is a standard to bounce off ideas.
One of the most successful brainstorming sessions I had was when I was paired with individuals who I would normally not hang out with. Instead of sticking to our own boundaries, we were all very open to everyone’s ideas and were very focused on completing the goal (maybe because we didn’t have the same background to fall back on). In the end, our ideas went through a variety amount of fun iterations that ultimately lead to a great final product. Since then, I’ve thought that the ability to contribute and compromise are key ingredients to a good brainstorming session.
Xinning Gui
November 13, 2012 at 3:10 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
One of my best experiences with brainstorming happened last summer. My friends and I wanted to make a special video to celebrate our graduation, so we had a brainstorming session. It was happy and fertile. The atmosphere was relaxed, but we did have a focus: how to make our video special, representative, funny and heartwarming. We respected each other’s ideas, and spawned many interesting and wild ideas. For example, one of my friends suggested that we should pretend to be witches riding brooms, and then make us look like flying by post-processing. We did that! We also used a small notebook to write down our ideas concisely.
The worst brainstorming session for me happened when I was in college. I chose a course which belonged to “General Education Courses”, so my classmates came from different departments. I was in a six-people team at the beginning and we needed to finish a project together. There were three people coming from a same department, so they formed a clique and dominated our so-called “brainstorming” session. They only cherished their own ideas, neglected the rest teammates’ ideas arrogantly, and behaved like control freaks. The brainstorming session was so unsuccessful and unpleasant that the rest of us, including me, left the team afterwards.
Jie
November 13, 2012 at 3:28 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I had a good experience with brainstorming, when our group met together discussing stakeholder research for our project. One of my group members was drawing a brainstorming diagram to record our ideas during our brainstorming session. It formed a sort of star network where the center node of the diagram was our design topic and all other nodes attached to it are related factors. We kept our focus on one factor at a time, thinking about all possible related things. The whole process was fluent and interesting. The diagram helped to refine our research plan and make our goal clearer. After reading the article regarding secrets to good brainstorming, I realized why I thought our meeting was successful. In a brainstorming session, ideation is not the only goal; following some rule to conduct the session is also critical to a successful brainstorming.
Also, I had a bad experience in the first group meeting, when we needed to think about a design question. We decided that everyone came up a question he/she was interested in, and I contributed an idea related to foreign trip. But one of my group members said my idea was like combing some existing Apps, and suggested me to search the web if I didn’t know those Apps. This made me feel silly and I was a little bit reluctant to talk about my other ideas with others. This meeting was a failure and we didn’t reach a consensus in the end. I think contributing more ideas is one of the most important aims in a brainstorming session. Everyone should encourage others to speak their ideas out, even if their ideas are less attractive.
Surendra Bisht
November 13, 2012 at 3:38 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
For brainstorming meetings, I prefer to have not more than 5 – 6 people because I always had a better experience with small groups. Recently, I had a good experience during a brainstorming meeting with the team members at a previous workplace. The main goal was to design a GUI prototype of a configuration dialog. We decided that each participant will create a mock UI of at least 4 prototypes before the meeting. During the brainstorming, we looked at each others prototype and discussed its pros and cons. In retrospect, I found that the meeting was productive because none of the participants had deep expertise in the UI design. It helped us to avoid any kind of bias during the brainstorming. Similarly with the team for the class project, we don’t have a designated expert. Each person comes up with his own set of ideas which are discussed together. The team consists of members from different background with different skills, which makes brainstorming fun. I think “Number your ideas” strategy works best for brainstorming. I also believe that “give everybody a turn” is not a bad strategy in a small group.
Once, I had the opportunity to facilitate a brainstorm meeting where the agenda was to brainstorm a feature that has usability and performance concerns. This was one of the few meetings that I had with a large group of 10 participants. As a facilitator, I started the conversation and others started to pitch in their ideas. Soon, the two senior members dominated the conversation and the small independent conversations started occurring sporadically. I felt there was no outcome of the meeting. I had a tough time as a facilitator due to lack of authority, which is important for a good facilitator. I have also been involved in some bad brainstorming meetings occurring in different time zones through teleconferencing. Such meetings have its own challenges in terms of understanding and communicating ideas. In such meetings experts generally dominate the discussions.
Jianlin
November 13, 2012 at 4:38 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I had a very successful brainstorming session with a colleague when we planned to design the main functional structure of a Resident Network Management System. After reading the paper about brainstorming, I reflect the factors that led to the success include: 1. a sharpened focus. Because both of us were familiar with the original workflow and how the online system could provide services, we only focused on the transforming the old workflow to an online version. The task was very clear. 2. Limited people. There were only two people, so it was easier to reach agreement than a big team. Since our goal is not to generate a bunch of great ideas, instead we were trying to find a working way, which is technically feasible and relatively efficient. Two people were enough for this goal. Once we were done with one function, we moved to another. The efficiency was great.
A bad experience is the kicking off the class project. Although it is just a class project, we have different perspective and expectation of the project. We have several parallel ideas, someone focused on the creativity, someone focused on topic area, and I focused on the feasibility. It was relatively hard to reach a common agreement. At last, it became not like a brainstorming session. We wasted time in persuade each other. So I would add one more surefire ways to kill a brainstorm: no playful rule.
Anirudh
November 13, 2012 at 4:51 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
The brainstorming session we conducted was very efficient as everyone in our team knew the aim of the session. The fact that there were only 3 of us in the team was also helpful, as it allowed us to listen to each other’ opinion and ideas without worrying about time-per-person as a constraint. According to me an ideal brainstorming session should have 3-5 members. A key factor behind the success of our session is that we had conducted surveys, interviews and competitive product research during the previous phase of the project. This helped us in understanding the problems faced by our potential customers/stakeholders. This follows the “stretch your mental muscles” principle.
During our brainstorming session we used whiteboards and “google docs” for collaborative editing. This allowed us to organize ideas under various categories (sometimes ideas would flip-flop between various categories). This follows the “make the space remember” principle advocated by Kelley. Also we used a shared spread-sheet to note how many ideas we had come up with. Though this is not “number your ideas” principle in literal sense it served us in similar way as we came up more ideas.
I’m glad to say that our brainstorming session did not suffer from the problems pointed in “Six surefire ways to kill brainstorm”. Sometimes we had the problem of coming up with too many details and writing down some of them. On the whole, since our effort was collaborative we generally avoided taking detailed notes as atleast one of us used to point out that we had unnecessary details in our notes and we should concentrate on main concepts instead.
Chunzi Zheng
November 13, 2012 at 5:05 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
The good experience with brainstorming:
From the article about secrets of good brainstorming we can see that the essential qualities of a good brainstorming are the easy atmosphere and quick thinking and recording. These qualities I read remind me a nice experience with brainstorming I had. It’s the first meeting of our project group to come up with our research question. The atmosphere is easeful and everybody join in the discussion without pressure. While in the brainstorming session, the focus was sharpen, the time was limited into several minutes, and everyone felt free to speak out his or her idea once it appears in head. Then when the time was up, we analyzed the different topics we have and decided a final topic for our research question. After that, we came to a second brainstorm to refine the research question based on the topic. In this way, our discussion was of high efficiency and was in a good order.
The bad experience with brainstorming:
The worst experience with brainstorming I have ever had was happened in my college time. The rule of our discussion was: after ten minutes thinking, every one has to come up 10 ideas about the solution, and all the group members had to present their idea one by one. The atmosphere was very depressing, because most of people are worrying about what if they cannot find ten solutions or what if their solutions are too simple or too naïve. And the ten minutes silence make people cannot breathe, let alone be inspired by each other. After a long silence thinking-time, group members presented their idea one by one, and they found that about half of their ideas are the same. So I think it is a waste of time to think alone without communicate with other people. And, what’s worse, after the one-by-one presentation, there’s no further brainstorming to refine it. The great power of discussion and the inspiration from others idea are not discovered in a brainstorming like this.
XIaoyue Xiao
November 13, 2012 at 5:06 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
A experience with brainstorming I’ve ever had could be judged as an good one according to the seven secrets mentioned in reading material was just last week, the group met to discuss about the sketches need to be added in our course project. First, we sharpened the focus by stating that the only thing we need to do is to come up with 12 more solutions of our design question. Second, we wrote playful rules by listing the existing sketches and making a rule of “ Do not provide similar ideas”. Third, we numbered our ideas to 4 ideas (we have 4 persons and need 12 ideas, so it should be 3 ideas given by each person at least) for each person in case there would be overlap between different ideas.
And a bad experience at hand was two weeks ago, the group of another course met to discuss about the topic of a case study. To explain the reason why I regard it as a bad one, I have to introduce the background of our group first. There were three people in our group and one guy had a couple of years work experience while the other to had not, so the one from industry actually acted as someone professional or an expert in the group. And what directly made this brainstorming work an “bad” one was we asked “expert” only and deeply discussed about the single idea he came up with ignoring the breadth of topic.
Yao
November 13, 2012 at 5:06 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
When I was in college, I had been in a club and we had some experience in performing and producing stage dramas. One time we wanted to create a drama mixed of several distinct features that are not likely to be relative in real world (for example, Chinese dragons appear in New York City). Before that performance, we first had a discussion to have a consensus on what we were going to do and what kind of effects we wanted, so we could have some common principles in mind. This might be the same as the “Sharpen the focus” rule in the reading. We clearly knew what we wanted, which enabled us to have efficient and productive brainstorming sessions. Also, after having common principles in mind, we could easily “Build and jump”. We often came up with some crazy ideas, and those ideas are likely to be applicable because of the common principles we set. Besides, we searched for others’ performance on Youtube to trigger new ideas, which is the same as the idea of “Get physical” rule.
As for the bad experience, it happened when I was doing a final project with some other students. We were developing a game, but only one of our members had graphics and game programming experience before. As a result, we found that most of the time we were asking for his opinion, which is “Ask the experts only”. Besides, maybe because of our lack of experience, we were trying to say “No silly stuff”, and I believe that is the main reason why we had a bad brainstorming experience.
Jinelle D'souza
November 13, 2012 at 6:17 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
During my undergraduate degree, we had to do a project that involved design of games in shopping arcades. Initially we designated one person (who visited these arcades frequently) the job of noting down the designs he had come across. Now he recorded the games he took an interest in, but had did not know about the other games. IDEO’s method-‘stretch your mental muscles’ is what I feel worked well for us in our brainstorming session. While other groups in our class tried to recollect the games and their designs from their previous visits, we visited numerous arcades as a group. Due to this, during our brainstorming session, we could build on what we saw as well as add our own creativity to it. As a result, the number of designs we produced was around 15 more than the other groups.
A time our brainstorming session was under pressure and not effective
My College Students Council had to come up with a name and design logo for our intercollegiate sports festival. The Dean headed this brainstorming session. While she was in the room, we were all afraid that our ideas were not good enough and so did not voice our opinion. If we did mention an idea, it was after repeatedly processing it in our mind before voicing it aloud. I think this stifled our creativity and the design ideas we received did not satisfy any of us. They were not usable. In the middle of this session, she received a phone call and had to leave. Thereafter, the flow of ideas was numerous and very creative. We started building on each other’s ideas and finally had so many good ones that it became hard to choose the best. I think the presence of a person of authority stifled our creativity and thinking process.
Martin S.
November 13, 2012 at 6:37 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Consistent with the readings, I’ve found that my most successful brainstorming sessions took place in open environments with peers; conversation often shuts down when a superior (e.g. a professor, manager) is involved. A relaxed, casual atmosphere seems to provoke divergent ideas.
As several others remarked, a group consisting of around five individuals is also likely to maintain conversation among all members. My sense is that the number is large enough to provide a sufficient forum for ideas, yet small enough to avoid social loafing. I’ve found it convenient that our design group involves four people with varied backgrounds. One of our design exercises involved mapping the tasks going into a teacher’s routinized lesson plan process. We all wrote out the process on several post-it notes independently, then collated them, and organized them logically into a flow chart. The exercise was not necessarily creative, but it did help us to materialize our collective knowledge. A parallel process is more creative, in which we used the group as a soundboard for potential design solutions to augment the creation of lesson plans.
The reading suggested as many as 10 in a brainstorming group; I wonder, to what extent would a real collaboration see diminished returns as the group grows.
I don’t feel that readings addressed it, but I’ve seen anonymous and pseudonymous media as successful ideation contexts, in part because they diminish the issues associated with evaluation and social hierarchy. Debates over design decisions that would never occur in person crop up readily over email, affording spaces for less-inhibited dialogue.
Dakuo
November 13, 2012 at 6:47 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
The good habits to ensure a successful brainstorm session, I really like the “rules”. “One conversation at a time” could prevent chaos. “Number your ideas” is a good strategy to keep the progress on track and to refer back to some previously mentioned ideas. “Stretch your mental muscles” is important. In our class project, I felt few ideas to think about before I did those research work and user experiences study. Warm-up exercises are essential in achieving a great idea. By understanding the background and feeling the reality environment, the ideas are no longer flying in the air.
After reading the article Six Surefire Ways to kill a brainstorm, it reminds me some brainstorm failure stories I experienced but I never think about the reason behind those brainstorm sessions. In my final project’s group work during my master’s study in engineering school at France, the faculty advisor gave his opinion at the very beginning of the brainstorm session. After his statement of planning about the project, no one else gave alternative directions. We four group members just commented on advisor’s idea and made refinement. We all lose interest to raise new idea or dare to say disagreement to the professor’s one.
In another experience in a class discussion, the group decided to share the speak chance for each group member. We gave talk one by one. It’s a good strategy to help person engage into the discussion but it didn’t help much about the idea generation. I would suggest interruption and arguing should be allowed in the brainstorm process to spur more interesting ideas.
The most awkward experience of unsuccessful brainstorm is someone mock other’s idea of unrealistic or silly idea. Those sarcasms extremely harm the passion of brainstorm. Not only the “silly” idea’s holder but also others would be hesitating to say out their ideas to avoid “being silly” comments.
Ishita Shah
November 13, 2012 at 7:28 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I have not experienced an organized brainstorming session yet, but one of the best brainstorming sessions that I got a chance to experience was during my undergraduate days. We were designing a t-shirt for our department. Each one of us had come well prepared for the discussion. We did not have turns to speak but people spoke one
after the other on a random basis and expressed their opinions on each of the ideas presented. There wasn’t a single moment of silence. Simultaneously one person was making a note of the good points and bad points on the board. By the end of session, we arrived at three creative and fantastic ideas for the t-shirt design.
Another good way of brainstorming, personally, is thinking through the problem with a colleague over a game of pool or a cup of coffee. Often, good ideas don’t strike when you stress too much over a problem. For me, many good ideas strike while I have a bath. So before going for one, I read the problem and go.
Many a times, a brainstorming session proves useless, because people do not speak up and remain quiet through it. This happened with me many times at work, when we had meetings with the team to decide on the software architecture. Our project manager would also be present and the newly joined team members would feel shy to even speak their names. I would then catch up with these shy team members over lunch and ask them to share their opinions. The casual atmosphere brought out many interesting and innovative ideas.
Chandra Bhavanasi
November 13, 2012 at 7:53 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I think brainstorming is an important tool for ideation, and probably any product must have had at least one brainstorming session to get new ideas flowing. I think Fluency and Flexibility as noted in the readings, are the main purpose for any brainstorming session. Having different people shoot ideas endlessly, critiquing on other ideas, having different perspectives etc., is what makes brainstorming sessions interesting. In all the sessions I had, we never had a facilitator and is a group brain storming. But in most of the sessions, we had diverse people who had different perspectives on each other’s’ ideas, and also most of them are not closed room. We also had “one conversation at a time” in one of our sessions and it worked out really good and highly productive. One of the not so bad experiences I had was during my internship, where in all of the team had a brainstorming session about the product along with our functional manager. He is our boss as well as a functional expert of the product. The session, according to me was not productive at all. The points “Lets the boss speak first” and “Ask the expert” tell us important not-to-do’s for brain storming sessions.
Ramraj
November 13, 2012 at 7:58 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
We had brain storming sessions so many times, of all the times the best time was when we had idea generating sessions at my previous company Samsung. Every year we used to generate ideas for new applications that goes into the latest samsung mobile phones.The best things that went well in the discussion were 1) Sharpen the focus
As there is some pride and reward attached to the best idea we used to classify our ideas according to the market (India, USA, Middle East etc.). After classifying we used to give our ideas depending on the need, for example, (Mobile Prayer – An application that focuses on Indian market, Zakat calculator – An application that focuses on Islamic people and Mobile tracker – An application that is focused for American market)
2) Number your ideas
We used to put the target of 75 ideas for 15 people with in 75 mins and this used to work really well. With in first 30 mins every one has to list down their ideas and for rest 45 mins there will be a discussion on the ideas.
3) Build and jump
We used to develop and enhance our ideas according to the present requirement. We used to mix two ideas into a single idea and again proceeding with the brain storming and so on.
After reading the six ways to kill a brain storm, I found some mistakes we had done in the above idea generating sessions
1) Let the boss speak first
Every meeting my project manager used to lead the sessions.Obviously there was some bossism in the sessions.We were not that comfortable and open minded in the sessions.
2) Ask the experts only
The most focus used to be on technical leader and lead engineers. The ideas from them used to carry more weight and I think this is mistake we did in our sessions.
3) No silly stuff
All the sessions were lead in professional way.There was no room for humor and jokes because there was manager in the room :). There was no room for silly ideas and funny ideas.
Matthew Chan
November 13, 2012 at 8:39 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
The most memorable brainstorming session i had was back in Dec 2009. It was me and two other graduate students and we needed to design a game to teach speech pronunciation. NOW HOW DO YOU DO THAT?
We made heavy use of the whiteboards, napkins, pens, and markers. Looking back, what made the session so eventful and fun was that all three of us had a design background. We were fully aware of the right and fun ways to ideate, to not shut down ideas, to build and jump, and so forth. Then there are brainstorming sessions that were dull because one or two individuals of the group “knew more” or were more assertive. The ideas weren’t bad, but there was little room to expand. No specific idea comes to mind, except for one.
Ironically, i’m guilty of it. I am in the middle of the Med App Jam here at UC Irvine. In my team of 6, i am the lead iOS developer and designer. First, ideation was ok. One team member had one idea, which we later built on top of it to get a better one. Other ideas were OK because we were afraid of generating the same ideas as other teams, given that we are exposed to the same media, from the same culture, access to the same type of medical students, etc. I never really knew a way to settle this. It always feels like game theory to me.
The next brainstorming session was designing the user interface. One at a time, we presented our designs, but again, my design was chosen. No part of the other team members’ designs were incorporated
I feel so guilty… i pointed out that other competing teams have the same design background as theirs, ie. Java+Android development, and that they will all design apps in a similar fashion. No one put up an argument, and we moved ahead with my design.
It’s hard to keep myself in check, and i still strive to find ways to give constructive feedback without shutting others down. I always try to avoid the “i’m better sand more experienced because of X” but i feel like classes, case studies, etc. neglect them.
Jeffrey
November 13, 2012 at 8:43 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I feel that having a large group of people during brainstorming sessions isn’t the most ideal situation at times. Often, individuals are too shy to immerse themselves with the group discussion and are often too afraid to voice out their ideas. This results from people worrying about how ridiculous their ideas may sound compared to everyone else’s ideas. Also, the more talkative individuals who often dominate/lead the discussion often overshadow the ideas thrown out by the more quiet individuals. I have noticed during some of my past brainstorming experiences that these ideas are often overlooked as more confident individuals assert their ideas. Another disadvantage of brainstorming in large groups is that individuals may lose track of their thoughts and ideas in the sea of ideas thrown out by the many other individuals in the brainstorming group. I have even experienced losing track my own ideas while trying to contribute or add on to another individual’s ideas. In general, I think it would be more beneficial to have people initially brainstorm on their own and jot down their thoughts, and then have each member of the brainstorming group to briefly throw out his or her idea once gathered. Of course, each individual in the brainstorming session should encourage all ideas thrown out however wild they may sound to make those who are more shy feel more comfortable in expressing themselves. To further address the issue of shyness, fun group bonding activities or group luncheons can help each member establish some sort of connection with each other prior to the brainstorming session. After all, it is always easier to speak in front of those who you are more comfortable with as opposed to speaking in front of people who are entirely unfamiliar to you.
Dongzi Chen
November 13, 2012 at 9:13 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Before I talk which points from the two articles work well or not, I want to point out the conflicts between the two articles. From these articles, far and away, wild ideas are very important. We emphasize that no bosses, no domination, even no rules during the bring storm. However, from these two essays, we also know that, sometimes, the bring storm needs some necessary conduction and preparation, and avoid off-site thinking. If we avoided off-site thinking and had conduction and preparation before we have bring storms, does it mean we constrict ourselves ideas already? If we constricted our ideas before bring storms, how could we raise wild ideas.
The second question is that the author rejects to give everybody a turn. He thinks it was painful. It was pointless. But if 8-12 people sit together, and we do not give everybody a turn, 2-3 people will take charge of the whole meeting. We should give a turn to the people who may have very good ideas but just not feel comfortable to speak in the public. For optimal performance, the questions can come up with the current ideas from attendees.
Different criteria work with diverse situations. We have criteria, but we need to judge what situation it is.
Shih Chieh Lee
November 14, 2012 at 9:41 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
There was a very good experience which happened in the last week. After Professor Olson’s time management presentation, I decided to walk back to my dorm instead of taking a shuttle, because she suggested we could take a walk sometimes to relax and let the ideas come up to our minds. I did take a walk and found it’s useful. Like “Build and jump”, the ideas go to a crescendo after the first slow and stuck phase. As both a facilitator and a brainstormer, my relaxing mind keeps fluency, and my mind could work like a rotor. Besides, as scene changes with my steps, I actually approach the idea from different viewpoint with passing “views”.
The bad experience happened in the college when I was the vice-president of the college club and was responsible for an event. I was leading a discussion for event’s theme and asked everyone to brainstorm. It’s not a good way because I’m the first one to throw out the idea and the hierarchy structure would definitely hinder the brainstorming as the rule “Let the boss speak first.” I was not the boss but was responsible for the event. I lead the discussion and it became my personal talk show because I found I did influence my members’ ideas. Hence, the brainstorming was blocked, because I gave everyone the example or template of the discussion, and I should be the last one to throw out my ideas.