What is Brainstorming?

Brainstorming is a method for generating ideas to solve a design problem. It usually

involves a group, under the direction of a facilitator. The strength of brainstorming is the
potential participants have in drawing associations between their ideas in a free-thinking
environment, thereby broadening the solution space.

Brainstorming is an extremely popular ideation technique for design teams

because of the freedom they have to expand in all directions, using out-of-the-
box and lateral thinking in search of the most effective solutions – rough answers
they’ll refine later. Marketing CEO Alex Osborn, brainstorming’s “inventor”,
captured the refined elements of creative problem-solving in his 1953
book, Applied Imagination. In brainstorming, we aim squarely at a design problem
and produce an arsenal of potential solutions. By not only harvesting our own
ideas but also considering and building on colleagues’ notions, we cover the
problem from every angle imaginable.

It is easier to tone down a wild idea than to think up a new one. 

- Alex Osborn
Before a design team gather (preferably in a room with a large board/wall for
pictures/Post-Its) for a brainstorming session, the target problem must
be clearly defined. A good mix of participants will expand the experience pool,
thus broadening the idea space.

Brainstorming may seem to lack constraints, but success depends on the

observance of eight house rules and someone acting as facilitator.

1. Set a time limit – depending on the problem’s complexity, 15–60 minutes is normal.
2. Begin with a target problem/brief – members should approach this sharply defined
question, plan or goal and stay on topic.
3. Refrain from judgment/criticism – no-one should be negative (including via body
language) about any idea.
4. Encourage weird and wacky ideas – further to the ban on killer phrases like “too
expensive”, keep the floodgates open so everyone feels free to blurt out ideas, as long as
they’re on topic.
5. Aim for quantity – remember, “quantity breeds quality”; the sifting-and-sorting
process comes later.
6. Build on others’ ideas – it’s a process of association where members expand on
others’ notions and reach new insights, allowing these ideas to trigger their own. Say
“and”—rather than discourage with “but”—to get ideas closer to the problem.
7. Stay visual – diagrams and Post-Its help bring ideas to life and help others see
things in different ways.
8. Allow one conversation at a time – keeping on track this way and showing respect
for everyone’s ideas is essential for arriving at concrete results.

Capturing ideas in brainstorming sessions means someone plays “scribe”,

marking every idea on the board. Alternatively, write down your own ideas as
they come, and share these with the group. Often, design problems demand
mixed tactics: brainstorming and its sibling approaches – braindumping (for
individuals), and brainwriting and brainwalking (for group-and-individual mixes).

Taking Care with Brainstorming

Brainstorming involves harnessing synergy – we leverage our collective thinking
towards a variety of potential solutions. However, having boundless freedom
presents challenges. In groups, introverts may stay quiet while extroverts
dominate. Whoever’s leading the session must “police” the team to ensure a
healthy, solution-focused atmosphere where even the shiest participants feel
fearless about speaking up. Likewise, a warm-up activity can cure brainstorming
“constipation” – e.g., asking participants to list ways the world would be different
if metal were like rubber.

Another risk is letting the team stray off topic and/or address other problems. As
we may use brainstorming in any part of our design process—including areas
related to a project’s main scope—sticking to the problem relevant to that part
(what Osborn called the “Point of View”) is vital. Similarly, framing problems with
“How Might We” questions helps us remember brainstorming is organic and free
of boundaries. Overall, brainstorming involves staying fluid in our search
for wayswe might resolve an issue, not chasing a “holy grail” solution developed
elsewhere. The idea is to mine idea “ore” and refine “golden” solutions from it
later.

Learn More about Brainstorming

The Interaction Design Foundation’s course on Design Thinking discusses
Brainstorming in depth:

Learn How to Use the Best Ideation Methods:

Brainstorming, Braindumping, Brainwriting, and
Brainwalking
Brainstorming is the most frequently practiced form of ideation. We recommend that you
use it along with Brainwriting, Brainwalking, and Braindumping. Here, you’ll learn the
best practices from the very best experts from d-school and IDEO as well of the father of
the Brainstorming technique, Alex Osborn.
Brainstorming is a great way to generate a lot of ideas that you would not be able to
generate by just sitting down with a pen and paper. The intention of brainstorming is to
leverage the collective thinking of the group, by engaging with each other, listening, and
building on other ideas. Conducting a brainstorm also creates a distinct segment of time
when you intentionally turn up the generative part of your brain and turn down the
evaluative part. You can use brainstorming throughout any design or work process, of
course, to generate ideas for design solutions, but also any time you are trying to generate
ideas, such as planning where to do empathy work, or thinking about product and services
related to your project.
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LEARN MORE ABOUT BRAINSTORMING

Design Thinking: The Beginner's Guide

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Take a deep dive into Brainstorming with our course Design Thinking: The Beginner's
Guide.

Some of the world’s leading brands, such as Apple, Google, Samsung, and General
Electric, have rapidly adopted the design thinking approach, and design thinking is being
taught at leading universities around the world, including Stanford d.school, Harvard, and
MIT. What is design thinking, and why is it so popular and effective?

The overall goal of this design thinking course is to help you design better products,
services, processes, strategies, spaces, architecture, and experiences. Design thinking helps
you and your team develop practical and innovative solutions for your problems. It is a
human-focused, prototype-driven, innovative design process. Through this course, you will
develop a solid understanding of the fundamental phases and methods in design thinking,
and you will learn how to implement your newfound knowledge in your professional work
life. We will give you lots of examples; we will go into case studies, videos, and other useful
material, all of which will help you dive further into design thinking.

This course contains a series of practical exercises that build on one another to create a
complete design thinking project. The exercises are optional, but you’ll get invaluable
hands-on experience with the methods you encounter in this course if you complete them,
because they will teach you to take your first steps as a design thinking practitioner.
What’s equally important is you can use your work as a case study for your portfolio to
showcase your abilities to future employers! A portfolio is essential if you want to step into
or move ahead in a career in the world of human-centered design.

Design thinking methods and strategies belong at every level of the design process.
However, design thinking is not an exclusive property of designers—all great innovators in
literature, art, music, science, engineering, and business have practiced it. What’s special
about design thinking is that designers and designers’ work processes can help us
systematically extract, teach, learn, and apply these human-centered techniques in solving
problems in a creative and innovative way—in our designs, in our businesses, in our
countries, and in our lives.

That means that design thinking is not only for designers but also for creative employees,
freelancers, and business leaders. It’s for anyone who seeks to infuse an approach to
innovation that is powerful, effective and broadly accessible, one that can be integrated into
every level of an organization, product, or service so as to drive new alternatives for
businesses and society.

Choosing Brainstorming
Over Other Techniques
Aside from brainstorming, there are numerous problem-solving and goal-achieving
strategies and techniques among which the most used are ‘Abstraction’, ‘Analogy’, ‘Divide
and Conquer’, ‘Hypothesis testing’, ‘Lateral thinking’, ‘Means-end analysis’, ‘Method of
focal objects’, ‘Morphological analysis’, ‘Proof’, ‘Reduction’, ‘Research’, ‘Root cause
analysis’ and ‘Trial-and-error’.
Several factors can influence one’s decision to choose brainstorming over all other
strategies. The most important characteristic of brainstorming is that it is defined as a
creative activity that encourages creative thinking from all participants. On the other side,
other brainstorming techniques can limit this process and result with presenting
uninspiring solutions and ideas.

Compared to different techniques, brainstorming includes the following phases:

presentation and definition of a central problem or a goal, generation of ideas, discussion of
the produced ideas, and final evaluation of the presented ideas. This activity allows the
creation of an open and relaxed atmosphere that stimulates everyone’s participation. It
creates an environment in which people feel comfortable enough to share their opinion and
point of view. When you are brainstorming by yourself or in a group, you can easily find
practical solutions to the issues you are encountering.

Brainstorming sessions can break out the conventional exchange of views because it
motivates sharing extraordinary ideas. Additionally, the process expands the human
creative horizon and it’s fun because people can enjoy in an open-ended search for new
ideas.

Group brainstorming can also be beneficial for establishing closer and effective
relationship with colleagues and superiors. When exchanging different ideas, people have
the possibility to hear others’ opinions and points of view, which can incite discussions that
could lead to the perfect solution. In the meantime, during these discussions, people could
get to know each other’s characters better. It is proved that people tend to get more
anxious when they have to contribute to a group where a person in a superior position is
present. Therefore, during the discussion stage where the environment starts to become
relaxed and everyone shares their ideas, eventually those who are more apprehensive will
loosen up and join the group.
Bringing Out The Best in
Brainstorming
Brainstorming can be conducted in three phases, which are a presentation of a problem or
objective, generation of ideas and evaluation of ideas phase. However, apart from the basic
principles of brainstorming which Osborn had determined back in 1942, with time,
numerous strategies have evolved and proved themselves helpful for bringing out the best
throughout this creative process.

These three strategies intertwined with the four basic rules can bring significantly good
results in brainstorming.

Setting the right tone of the room

It is essential for the brainstorming session to start with the right tone. This means that no
matter who the facilitator or a moderator who leads the session is, establishing the tone of
the room is crucial. Everyone is familiar with how poorly structured discussions held in an
uncomfortable atmosphere can influence the meeting’s productivity. By comparison, a
relaxing and pleasant environment can have a positive effect on the overall brainstorming
session.

Presenting the problem/goal as a challenge

question
Sometimes posing challenging questions when defining the focus problem and/or objective
of the brainstorming session can be extremely helpful. People tend to get distracted from
the main focus when are not introduced to the main problem that needs solving. To avoid
this, at the beginning of the brainstorming session, be that group or individual, the problem
or the goal needs to be defined but in a way that will make them stay imprinted on
participants’ mind. This is possible if the person who guides the discussion presents the
problem or the objective as a challenging question that will engage everyone to actively
participate in the discussion.

The atmosphere in the room can impact the overall brainstorming session.
 

Smart ranking of ideas

Ideas’ ranking could make or break the whole brainstorming session. This is the moment
when the leader of the session decides which ideas are worth pursuing and which are not.
However, the very important part of this strategy is first to choose the way how the ideas
are going to be ranked and later to do that fairly so that neither participant feels excluded
from the group. Sometimes it is good to even take in consideration a few ideas that will
potentially be rejected because that act can be a motivation for people to continue
participating actively in future discussions.

Using Brainstorming in
the Real World
Brainstorming is an activity that could be extremely revitalizing for the brain. It breaks the
traditional and conventional thinking and boosts fresh ideas. As a group or individual
activity, brainstorming can find its use in many industries and departments.

Regardless of the industry, the process of brainstorming starts with defining the problem
and/or the goal of the project.

Content Writing

One important aspect of the process of writing is organizing the ideas. Consequently,
individual brainstorming can be a very good method for content writers. Usually, when
content writers dive into their creative phase, numerous inspirations and ideas come up.
However, many writers are sometimes challenged and can lose focus on free writing
because of their strong need to re-read, re-write and correct sentences and paragraphs.
Brainstorming can help writers to set the focus directly on the generation of ideas, instead
of on constantly going back and forth. In conclusion, brainstorming can allow content
writers to stop overthinking and write free without interruptions.

Marketing

In marketing brainstorming can be helpful for answering the following questions: ‘How to
launch a new product?’, ‘How to increase your sales?’, ‘Which way to develop a marketing
plan?’, ‘How to improve your service’? etc. In the process of creating a campaign, group or
individual brainstorming could have many benefits. For example, it is known that the best
solutions for a marketing campaign are a blend of content, design, and insights. When
making a campaign for a specific brand it is important to think of numerous different
topics, sometimes unrelated to the final objective because those could be the ultimate boost
for the brain.

Studying

Brainstorming can also be beneficial in the studying and learning processes of students.
Learning can be improved by practicing brainstorming because it gives the chance for
improvement in the processes of lateral, analytical and critical thinking. Individual
brainstorming while studying is an effective way of producing ideas, measuring
comprehension and in the end, analyzing knowledge. By concentrating on ideas that
revolve around the important aspects of the central topics, students can grow their
ambition for learning and discovering new ideas. It can also improve the student's reading
and writing and comprehension skills.

iMindQ as a
Brainstorming Tool
The key to productive brainstorming isn’t just following the basic rules and strategies.
Good brainstorming requires more than a traditional group and individual brainstorming
where participants generate their own and build upon other’s ideas.

Brainstorming can be accompanied by different tools that allow planning, analyzing and
tracking the progress of presented ideas. Called brainstorming and mind mapping tools,
these can help the entire process of brainstorming in a group or on your own.

iMindQ is a mind mapping tool that finds a great use in brainstorming. It is developed with
the purpose to simplify the process of generating and organizing ideas and thoughts
visually. As an easy-to-use brainstorming software, it allows users to create mind maps
using visual diagrams for connecting topics, ideas, and information.

When it comes to group brainstorming, this user-friendly tool is practical and useful
because with it, one team can avoid organizing its ideas on paper and get a clear overview
of everyone’s proposals. In team brainstorming, the moderator who leads the session with
iMindQ will make a map of the focus goal and all presented ideas. This is a great way of
organizing the brainstorming session since it allows participants to connect and interlink
ideas visually which can stimulate creative instead of linear thinking. The created map will
be later discussed and analyzed between team members, and in the end, all ideas will be
evaluated so that an optimal solution is chosen.
This template can help you in the process of brainstorming in a group or on your own.
 
As a tool for individual brainstorming, iMindQ could help manage concepts in a more
structured way than just writing them on paper and taking notes. Brainstorming maps
could be a great kickstart for the brain. With them, users can get a more organized view of
their generated ideas and inspire themselves to produce more. Mind maps are created with
a central topic as a tree that braches out in subtopics that can be limitless.

A variety of mind mapping templates are available for both teams and individuals who
participate in brainstorming sessions at work or at home. In mind mapping there are no
limits to the ideas and thoughts that you can have on your mind.

Finally mind mapping as an activity can stimulate your creative thinking and give you the
opportunity to solve problems more effectively.