Ideation is a fancy term for brainstorming. What sets design thinking apart is the focus on user desirability in exploring new territory.

Ideation is leveraged to:

• Harness the collective perspectives and strengths of your team.

• Step beyond obvious solutions and drive innovation.

• Uncover unexpected areas of exploration.

• Create fluency (volume) and flexibility (variety) in your innovation options.

…you have a clear user point-of-view you want to solve around (See Define).

…you have a good understanding of user pain points.

…you want to push the project team into new territory to learn more about your users through concept testing.

Ironically, this stage is the most expansive and free-form, yet we impose the most rules here to make it successful. When you brainstorm alone or with others, it's important to maintain one focus on one conversation at a time, prioritize quantity over quality (as the latter comes with down-voting in selection), getting wild/otherworldly with your ideas, defer judgement, and build on ideas (a "yes, and" approach).

Analogous: Leverage external inspiration to see your challenge in a different light. Often, the challenges we face are already being solved for in other industries. Explore online resources, have conversation with professionals in another industry or engage other sources to think about your opportunity space differently.

Introvert: Brainstorm on your own. Set an “idea quota,” and challenge yourself to generate ‘x’ ideas. (We encourage starting with 10!)

Extrovert: Brainstorm with a partner or a team. Set the ground rules above, and capture your new ideas on post-its as you say them aloud.

Access Ideate Miro modules and templates here!