SEARCH

Brainstorming sessions for UX design

Discussion articles

• Brainstorming
  "Brainstorming is an individual or group process for generating alternative ideas or solutions for a specific topic. Good brainstorming focuses on the quantity and creativity of ideas: the quality of ideas is much less important than the sheer quantity. After ideas are generated, they are often grouped into categories and prioritized for subsequent research or application."
  (UPA - Usability Book of Knowledge)

• Brainstorming sessions
  A brainstorming session occurs within the preparation phase of site visits. It helps the project team to come to a common understanding of the domain. Through sketching the main role's workflow you can clearly recognise what information is missing and needs to be gathered in the site visit interviews. This session provides a basis for setting a focus and creating questions for the site visits.

• Brainstorming technique for problem-solving, team-building and creative process
  Brainstorming with a group of people is a powerful technique. Brainstorming creates new ideas, solves problems, motivates and develops teams. Brainstorming motivates because it involves members of a team in bigger management issues, and it gets a team working together. However, brainstorming is not simply a random activity. Brainstorming needs to be structured and follow brainstorming rules.

• How to run a brainstorming meeting
  The most important thing about a brainstorming session is what happens after it ends. No matter how poorly you run a brainstorming meeting, some decent ideas will surface. But depending on what happens after the session, those ideas may or may not impact anything. So while you can read books and take courses on better brainstorming techniques, the most important thing is figuring out how the brainstorming session fits into the larger decision making process you or your team has. Even if you fix how you run the meeting itself, and get better ideas, if you can’t migrate them into the decision making process for the project, what’s the point? With this central point in mind, the following essay covers how to run brainstorming sessions in a way that is most likely to be effective afterwards.

• Rules for productive brainstorming sessions
  Brainstorming sessions tend to be more productive if they follow some basic rules.

• Six great ways to ruin a brainstorm
  "The brainstorm (aka thought shower or ideation session) is the most popular group creativity exercise in business. It is quick, easy and it works. But many organizations have become frustrated with brainstorms and have stopped using them. They say brainstorms are old-fashioned and no longer effective. But the real reason for the frustrations is that the brainstorms are not facilitated properly. A well-run brainstorm is fun and energetic. It will generate plenty of good ideas. But a poor brainstorm can be frustrating and demotivational. Let's look at some simple ways to ruin your next brainstorm meeting."
  (Paul Sloane, Associated Content)

Tools

• Sticky sorter
  "Ever found yourself lost in the eye of a brainstorm? Lots of great information, but it’s all over the place! Sticky Sorter is a Grassroots Project, developed by two Microsoft Employees, that you can use today to manage such challenges. The inventors, Julie and Sumit, were looking for an easier way to capture, sift through, and organize hundreds of research observations traditionally done on physical sticky notes in an affinity diagramming exercise with researchers from around the world. The result is StickySorter which met their complex needs, supports virtual collaboration, and is now available for you to use in managing your next brainstorm."
  (Microsoft Office Labs)