Ideation & Brainstorming Resources
Brainstorming is a creative technique where a group or individual generates a large number of ideas spontaneously, often used to solve problems or stimulate creative thinking.
Ideation refers to the process of generating, developing, and sharing ideas. It’s often used in creative problem-solving or innovation processes to explore various concepts and possibilities.
Brainstroming and ideation techniques may include freeform ideation, mindmapping, swot analysis, storyboards and more.
FREEFORM IDEATION
A creative process in which individuals or a group generate ideas without constraints or structured guidelines. It encourages a free flow of thoughts and often involves capturing every idea that comes to mind without immediate evaluation. This approach fosters creativity and can lead to unexpected and innovative solutions.
1. Define the Goal: Clearly outline the problem or goal you want to address.
2. Encourage Divergent Thinking: Think broadly and generate as many ideas as possible. Quantity over quality initially.
3. Source Material Stimulus: Become inspired by visuals, ephemera, text, audio or keywords to spark creativity.
4. Set a Time Limit: Keep the session focused by setting a specific time for your ideation. This helps maintain energy and prevents overthinking.
5. Capture Ideas: Use tools like a whiteboard, sticky notes, or digital platforms (like Mural) to capture and display ideas visibly.
6. Defer Judgment: Postpone evaluation during the ideation phase. All ideas are considered without criticism.
7. Encourage Wild Ideas: Embrace unconventional or seemingly impractical ideas, as they can lead to innovative solutions.
8. Reflect and Evaluate: After the ideation session, reflect on the generated ideas and evaluate their relevance, and potential for solving a defined problem or capturing the interest of your audience.
9. Synthesize: Narrow down ideas based on feasibility/practicality and your own interest & will to see that idea through.
MINDMAPPING
A mind map is a diagram that visually organizes thoughts into a hierarchical structure. It involves writing down a central theme and thinking of new and related ideas which radiate out from the center. By focusing on key ideas written down in your own words and looking for associations and connections between them, you can map knowledge in a way that will help you to better understand and retain information and move forward with an informed and intentional process.
The development of the concept starts with brainstorming as wide a range of ideas as possible, and refining them through a number of development stages until you are left with those that solve the communication problem most effectively.
Questions at the heart of the Project:
1. What am I passionate about?
2. What are my artistic, social, political and environmental concerns?
3. Who am I speaking to?
4. What interests me formally and visually?
5. What are narratives that have not been told or are under explored?
6. What is my personal stake within this subject?
7. What are my biases and place within this subject?
8. What will be my research methodology and sources?
9. What are my conceptual and material expectations for the project?
Narrow Your Topic:
1. Mind/Concept Mapping
2. Visual Studies
3. Revisiting Sketchbooks
4. Site Visits
5. Word List
6. Journal Entries
7. Peer Review
8. Canonical Research
Research Methodology:
1. Archival Research
2. Books
3. Interviews
4. Data Collection
5. Academic Texts
6. Academic or Verified Articles
7. Image Collection
8. Found Footage
9. Field Visit
10. Biographical research
11. Social or Material Experimentation
12. Familial or Local Archives
13. Case Studies
14. Prototypes
—
Research Approaches:
Qualitative research focuses in understanding a research query as a humanistic or idealistic approach. Qualitative method is used to understand people’s beliefs, experiences, attitudes, behavior, and interactions. It generates non-numerical data. Examples: Ethnographic Research (embedding oneself into the daily life and routine of the subject or subjects); Narrative; Case Study; Grounded Theory (constructing theory from data).
Quantitative Research is defined as a systematic investigation of phenomena by gathering quantifiable data and performing statistical, mathematical, or computational techniques. Quantitative research collects information from existing and potential customers using sampling methods and sending out online surveys, online polls, questionnaires, etc., the results of which can be depicted in the form of numerical.
Generating Ideas and Concepts from Concept Mapping
You can use the information in a concept map to generate additional concepts for your project by reorganizing it.
Position your design problem as the central idea of your mind map.
Place circles containing your initial concepts for solving the problem around the central topic.
Brainstorm related but non-specific concepts, and add them as subtopics for these ideas. All related concepts are relevant. At this stage, every possible concept is valuable and should not be judged.
DESIGN DEVELOPMENT (For when we move into the design process…)
Start with Thumbnails!
The creative development process starts can start with thumbnails, working their way through rough layouts and comprehensives to the final solution. Thumbnails are small, simple hand-drawn sketches, with minimal information. These are intended for the designer’s use and, like concept maps, are visuals created for comparison.
Their uses include:
/ Concept development and visualization of ideas
/ Preliminary evaluation of content (they allow you to sift and sort ideas quickly and effectively)
/ Preliminary evaluation of form (value studies, compositional studies, potential placement of elements)
/ Note-taking (a tool to record verbal or visual information quickly and accurately)