Ideation sessions are the roadmap to creative thinking, innovative idea generation, solving tough problems and working with – and engaging – your team. These types of sessions are hugely valuable, but they can sometimes be more difficult to execute well than less creative exercises. To ensure your ideation sessions are not just productive, but also fun and interactive, try keeping these four tips in mind. These best practices, techniques and tools will enrich your process and set you up to achieve gold-standard results.
1. Clearly Define Objectives and Challenges
One of the greatest critical determinants of an ideation is the ability to define your goal. Without a goal, participants have no shared objective, and the session can meander and potentially derail all together. Clear objectives give participants a target, something to which to work towards, as well as a means to ascertain whether or not the subsequent ideas are useful and implementable.
How to implement?
Another person might take the idea and run with it, working up a rough sketch of a screen and presenting it to the group. The group reacts to it, expressing what they do or don’t like about it. More sharing and critique continues, and eventually the group arrives at a common vision of the goal or problem of the session, and how they’ll get there.
Articulate an initial problem statement. Once you understand the kind of session you’re engaging in, it’s time to move on to segment 2 of the intro. What is the problem you’re trying to solve, as you currently understand it? If you’re holding a brain-writing session, then this is a brief statement of the problem or opportunity you’re all trying to delve further into.
Hot to frame the challenge?
Begin by creating ‘How Might We’ (HMW) questions that help identify the issue at hand and provide an opening for a broad range of potential solutions: HMW questions should be wide enough to facilitate exploration and diverse responses, but narrow enough to provide focus and limitations. For example, ‘How might we make the onboarding experience intuitive and engaging for users who are trying the platform for the first time?’ This approach invites participants to think creatively about potential solutions. See below.
How to clarify the goals?
Be sure that all participants are clear about the goals for the session. Give a brief overview of the nature of the problem, the goals of the session and any relevant background or core stories that are related to the issue at hand.
2. Utilize Proven Ideation Techniques
Using these structured ideation techniques can narrow the focus of the creative process. For example, using brainstorming, design thinking, and affinity diagramming structures can increase the chances of covering all possible solutions. Check out a complete list of ideation techniques here. Using these tools can help participants think creatively, while ensuring that they don’t miss a single potential solution.
Brainstorming
Brainstorming is often credited to advertising guru Alex Osborn, the original form of brainstorming is a breadth-first approach to generating several ideas at pace: encourage as many ideas as possible and don’t judge them at this stage – the emphasis is on quantity, not quality – set a timebox and review, evaluate and refine the best ideas together.
For example, you might conduct a brainstorming session focused around improving the onboarding process for a telemedicine app: tutorials that are interactive and walk users through the experience; registration form fields simplified or reduced; onboarding checklists in the voice of each user’s voice.
Design Thinking
Design Thinking is a user-centric approach where you Empathise with users → Define problems → Ideate possible ways to solve problems → Prototype ways to solve problems → Test ways to solve problems.
Design thinking ensures you develop an idea based on what users want, and continuously iterate and improve. For example, if you’re using design thinking to reimagine the onboarding of a healthcare app, you’d: map out user pain points and iterate possible solutions → prototype new onboarding flows → test those flows with users.
Affinity Diagramming
Affinity Diagramming is the practice of sorting and grouping ideas into themes or patterns in order to clarify connections and facilitate insight. They can be particularly useful in synthesising large amounts of information and making key breakthroughs. For example, after a brainstorming session, you might use an affinity diagram to group ideas together and look for patterns that might support improvements in user experience, such as making something easier to navigate or adding or improving visual design.
How Might We?
Questions are a great way to translate challenges into ways to think creatively about opportunities. The HMW or Human-Might-We? technique is often paired with the ‘Yes, and…’ exercise. By framing the challenge in the form of an HMW question, participants automatically think of solutions that are aligned with the question. For example, an HMW question to improve the onboarding flow of a telemedicine app might be: ‘How might we reduce user anxiety about setting up the system?’ This guides participants to think about ways that might reduce the user anxiety about the sign-up process.
Let’s check this example. In first-time usage, users are not able to complete the set-up of our healthcare telemedicine app, which leads to confusion and incomplete registrations.
- Simplify by making it frictionless.
How might we simplify the on-boarding experience to be intuitive and effortless for users?
Solution: Deliver a step-by-step on-boarding tutorial that walks the user through key features and functions by using clear and simple instructions and visuals.
- Personalise using the user’s context.
How might we personalise the on-boarding experience to address each user’s health goals and preferences?
Solution: Enable a quick questionnaire at the beginning of the on-boarding process to ask about the user’s health goals and preferences to serve up the experience accordingly.
- Reduce anxiety by mitigating the user’s frustration.
How might we mitigate first time-user anxiety of the process?
Solution: Alleviate anxiety and fear by delivering reassuring messages and FAQs during the on-boarding process, and add a ‘Help’ button (which directs the user to customer support personnel) if the user gets stuck.
- Integrate support by having humans standby during the onboarding.
How might we deliver real-time support for users to set-up the app during on-boarding?
Solution: Deliver live chat-support or a virtual assistant (AI helps) that can stay with the user during the on-boarding process and can answer questions and help during setup.
- Increase accessibility for a diverse audience.
How might we make the on-boarding process easily accessible to users with varying levels of health literacy?
Solution: Utilise plain language and visual components to clearly convey information to users with varying degrees of health literacy. Provide voice-guided instructions and rely on screen-readers to enhance accessibility.
- Use feedback as input for iteration.
How might we collect and use feedback from users to improve the on-boarding experience?
Solution: Collect feedback from users about their on-boarding experience by requesting it at the end. Provide a short survey such as: ‘How did you find the on-boarding experience? Please list 3 areas of improvement’. Use the data to deliver data-driven iterations.
- Leverage technology to enhance human-driven on-boarding
How might we deliver engaging digital on-boarding using interactive technology?
Solution: Develop interactive walkthroughs that show users how to use the app features while increasing interest and awareness. Alternatively, use demo videos to the same effect.
- Build trust by instilling confidence in the user.
How might we deliver a security and safety-focused on-boarding to ensure that people enter personal health information?
Solution: Clearly communicate approach to privacy and security during on-boarding by communicating security protocols and reassuring usersYour data is protected and encrypted.’ Ensure delivery of certifications if applicable.
- Educate by communicating benefits and value.
How might we provide educational resources to show users the value of the app in quick time?
Solution: Create a set of short tutorials or other components that provide a walkthrough of key app features and functionalities in a simple manner. Deliver these tutorials both during onboarding and in-app in the form of tool-tips.
- Engage by keeping users motivated throughout the process.
How might we create an on-boarding experience that keeps users engaged, motivated to finish and to use the app thereafter?
Solution: Provide gamified badges as progress-based rewards or milestone achievements while on-boarding. Offer personalised follow-up messages or tips to keep users engaged in the process after the on-boarding experience is complete.
3. How to Run Ideation Sessions Fostering an Inclusive Environment?
A key to leading an effective ideation session is making everyone feel included. When participants feel that their views are welcome, you’re really doing more than helping them to relax or getting better participation. You’re creating an environment for people to contribute their best thinking. In fact, you’re actually creating an environment conducive to innovation. To see the difference, think about how you feel invited when you are.
When your content contributions are sought and welcomed, you’re much more likely to not only participate wholeheartedly, but also to offer up what’s unique about you: new and novel perspectives that only you bring to the situation. This is distinct from merely helping people to participate through assuaging their emotions or relaxing them. It’s enough that you’re making them feel more comfortable; you’re really creating the potential for someone to be at their most creative.
How to Implement?
Ensure participation – one way to do this is with round-robin brainstorming or silent brainstorming (brain writing) so that no person ends up dominating.
Establish rules for how you will engage with them that support their safety (eg, ‘We’re all entitled to our beliefs, so let’s make sure we don’t gloat or say “I told you so” if we’re proved right’).
Draw on diversity. Get input from team members of different departments or functional training. People from varying backgrounds can bring different perspectives and ideas that a lack of diversity in a team cannot.
Check our article and how to foster inclusive environment at work within a project.
4. Use Ideation Tools to Improve Ideation Sessions
In terms of detail, technology can be a massive positive effect to running an ideation session. It helps you keep things organised so you can facilitate better and ultimately come up with more ideas in the given timeframe. Idea management software like Impactor APP can act as your secret weapon when it comes to a successful ideation session. It should help you track and keep ideas in order and, as a result, your sessions run more smoothly. Better yet, it allows you to collaborate more effectively without worrying about losing ideas along the way. With the best tech you’ll be keener to collect, organise and harness ideas during brainstorming sessions, in turn releasing more creative potential.
- Centralized Idea Collection
Advantages: Ideas-management software collects and stores in a single place all of your team’s ideas about enhancing the telemedicine app. From improving user interfaces to adding new features, it collects every one and retains easy access.
Example: Your team had many ideas for making onboarding easier for new users, pinging your chat, sending you a long list via a group email, and talking about it in a meeting. By now, these ideas might be scattered everywhere. By asking for all the suggestions in one place you can assess all the various suggestions, such as a streamlined registration process or a tutorial for first-time users that can help guide them as they first start.
- Enhanced Collaboration
Advantages: These tools help with real-time collaboration, encouraging your team to brainstorm on-the-fly revisions. Attributes such as commenting, voting and sharing encourage your team to become more emotionally invested in each other’s suggestions, and ultimately develop novel ideas together.
For example, in a brainstorm on how to enhance patient engagement features, staff members might comment on each other’s ideas, vote on the most promising suggestions or work together on it collaboratively. There might be new ideas that come to mind as a consequence, such as linking specific health tips to a user’s history.
- Improved Organization and Tracking
Advantages: With idea management software, ideas can be tagged and categorised so that they can be sorted – to make sure only the most useful ideas are selected; and tracked – from conception through to implementation.
For example, if you’re assessing various ways to improve the usability of a telemedicine app (eg, video consultations, appointment scheduling, patient reminders and so on), you can divide your notes by features. These will help you keep track of the features currently being developed or the features you need more input on.
- Efficient Evaluation and Prioritization
Advantages: Or enabling tools for evaluating and scoring ideas relative to metrics such as feasibility, impact, narrative coherence, fit to user needs and user preferences. This helps cut through the fog of ideation and concentrate on the most impactful improvements.
Example: You might get dozens of ideas for better telehealth with this app. The software gives each a score that you can use to sort according to how much they would help with things such as patient satisfaction or ease of integration with already existing systems, so that you know which features to tackle first.
- Better Transparency and Accountability
One benefit is that everyone can see the status of submitted ideas, and track who is doing what. The visibility leads to accountability. It brings transparency to the creative process and ensures that team members’ input is officially documented and used.
Example: if there is a new feature for virtual consultations, everyone can see the status of this suggestion on the software, and who will implement it – this fosters commitment and ensures that contributions are not forgotten or ignored.
- Enhanced Data and Insights
Advantages: The program produces measurement of ideas submitted, trends, impressionability, engagement, and many other statistics, which inform you of what’s working, and what isn’t.
For example, analysing the data you collect through your idea management software could reveal that there are multiple suggestions made by different team members related to improvements for the appointment scheduling system in your app. Based on the sheer volume of feedback combined with where it originated, you can make the decision to focus your development efforts in that area.
- Streamlined Communication
Advantages: Integrated communication features allow for discussions and status changes to be posted without altering the direction or abandoning the tool. This helps keep the focus in an idea-generating space and removes the need for other communication mediums.
Example: If your team is rolling out a new feature for patient notification, they can discuss design minutiae, post status updates, and field questions all with the software’s chat while also managing ideas.
- Scalability
Advantages: Increased volumes of ideas and participants scale well with idea management software, since each new stakeholder on your team doesn’t congest the feedback idea screens as they did with email.
For example: And as you add elements to your app for running a telemedicine practice – like adding more features, or additional team members – the software supports all of those additional possibilities and users. When you introduce advanced analytics, or expand your service to new regions, the software grows with your needs.
