A guide to creating ideas collectively đź’ˇ
6 great advice for ideation
First of all, wtf is ideation? To be totally honest, I didn’t really know what ideation was until I started Pop Up back in 2012. In short, it is a creative process where you generate ideas. It’s what most people (including myself pre-Pop Up) call brainstorming. I actually don’t know who decided it needed a new name. But whatever.
There are several ideation methods out there and how to chose them is at the end of the day just a matter of personal taste — as well as a bit dependent on what kind of ideas you are looking for. But what people more than often tend to forget, is that you need to chose method(s) according to the people you have in your team. Cause ideation is not as simple as you’d think. Shit can seriously get real and it often does more harm than good if you don’t know how to create a good process around it. Here’s my best advice.
#1 Define a clear goal
I can’t stress enough the importance of a clear goal. Everything becomes so much easier if you know what you’re trying to achieve and it becomes your GPS that through the creative process. Because the idea has to answer the goal.
#2 Everybody needs to be đź’Ż present
One thing that is also very important (and that a lot of people tend to forget) is participation. The whole idea is to build upon each other's ideas, thus the participation of all group members is crucial. You will always get the best results when everyone is involved. If not, it's just a waste of time.
#3 Be analogue
Drawing and using post-it helps to visualise the idea(s). It also makes it easier and quicker to change and move around. Also to go back to my previous advice, it helps keep everyone present.
#4 Don’t be a douche
Make sure that everybody is heard and instead of shooting down ideas, build on them. If not, you won't encourage people to share their thoughts. With that said, try to use the yes and mentality when building on ideas.
#5 Quantity over Quality
Don’t look for the good ideas to begin with. Here is the one place where it’s actually good to have quantity over quality (at least to begin with). The point is to generate as many ideas as possible so that you in the end have a lot to pick from/work on.
#6 Don’t force it
If it sucks and you all want to kill each other, just stop. Change method or environment because it's not going to get better. So try to feel it and modify as you go and make sure, this is a responsibility everybody has. If it doesn’t work for you, speak up!
If you want to get a deeper understanding of how we work with ideation, contact us at The Pop Up Agency. You can also find great tools on The Project of How and Method Kit .
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Until next time,
