The purpose of this building block

Introduction

As an IT professional, you will be asked to solve all kinds of problems. How can we develop a robot that makes grandma feel less lonely? How can we make it more appealing for students to use this project planning website? How will you come up with possible solutions? In such situations, it is helpful if you know some techniques for creative problem-solving. Brainstorming in teams is one way to generate a lot of ideas quickly. This way, you will have a broader array of solutions to choose from and can select the best for your situation.

In this building block, you will learn how to conduct effective brainstorm sessions. For this, you will learn about the brainstorm mindset and the steps of a brainstorm session. You will also learn some basic brainstorming techniques and how to prevent some of the most common pitfalls.

If you have any comments or questions about this building block, please contact Danny Plass (Saxion).

Illustration by Laura Henneke. CC-BY-NC-ND.

Learning goals

After this building block:

You know what brainstorming is and what you can use it for (Introduction)
You are aware of the mindset for effective brainstorming (Mindset)
You can apply the steps for an effective group brainstorm (Steps)
You can apply some basic brainstorming techniques for diverging and converging (also in Steps)
You know how to prevent some of the most common brainstorming pitfalls (Tips)

DOT framework

The DOT framework helps you reason about research when developing solutions. Methods are divided into 5 research strategies based on two considerations.

In the context of the DOT framework, brainstorming is applied in the Workshop research strategy, trying to think up solutions to close the innovation gap between what is already known from available work and what is necessary to solve the problem in the application domain.

The ICT research methods card deck contains a specific card Brainstorm, which you can use when planning out your project approach.

The brainstorm mindset

For a brainstorm session to be really effective, we need to defer our critical thinking and open up to a more creative, generative mindset. This can only happen in a safe environment. Design agency IDEO formulated 7 brainstorm rules that allow for this creativity to happen:

"Defer judgment. You never know where a good idea is going to come from. The key is make everyone feel like they can say the idea on their mind and allow others to build on it.
Encourage wild ideas. Wild ideas can often give rise to creative leaps. In thinking about ideas that are wacky or out there we tend to think about what we really want without the constraints of technology or materials.
Build on the ideas of others. Being positive and building on the ideas of others take some skill. In conversation, try to use “and” instead of “but.”
Stay focused on the topic. Try to keep the discussion on target, otherwise you can diverge beyond the scope of what you're trying to design for.
One (brief) conversation at a time. Your team is far more likely to build on an idea and make a creative leap if everyone is paying full attention to whoever is sharing a new idea.
Be visual. Nothing gets an idea across faster than drawing it. Doesn't matter if you're not Rembrandt!
Go for quantity. Aim for as many new ideas as possible. In a good session, up to 100 ideas are generated in 60 minutes. Crank the ideas out quickly and build on the best ones."

These are the rules from IDEO, but similar rules can be found elsewhere. For beginners, the most important rules to focus on are to Defer judgment and Go for quantity.

Brainstorming steps

An effective brainstorm session starts with good preparation:

Define a clear question to tackle in the session
Select a facilitator and variety of people for your team (often teams are a given in the school context)
Create an activity plan for the session
Get all the necessary materials.

During the session itself, you will go through the following steps:

Welcome
Briefing
Diverging
1. Individual idea generation
2. Group idea generation and combination
Converging
1. Idea grouping
2. Idea selection
Create an action plan

Pro-tip: After converging once, it is often fruitful to go quickly through a final diverging-converging cycle again.

0. Preparation

Define a clear question to tackle in the session

Discuss the problem with the problem owner or client (or simply: within your team). Try to clarify the (real) problem and why it is relevant, by asking questions such as:

Why is it a problem?
What are the causes of this problem?
Who is involved?
What is the purpose?

Then define the brainstorm question in a way that makes it concrete, positive (no negations), relevant and to-the-point. Often the central question takes the form of: "How might we ... ?".

Select a facilitator and variety of people for your team

In the school context, often teams are already a given. In practice, you would want to get a diverse team together with various roles and expertise.

The facilitator will lead the session in terms of the process, making sure time limits are kept and everybody is involved.

Create an activity plan for the session

Decide on the specific brainstorming techniques to apply within each step of the brainstorm session and the time duration for each step. See the next steps for inspiration. Keep the whole session within the time allotted, typically somewhere between 15 and 60 minutes.

Get all the necessary materials

Depending on the selected techniques, you may need some materials, such as a ball, post-its, pens and markers, paper, "brown paper", sheets, whiteboards or print-outs.

1. Welcome

At the start of a brainstorm:

Quickly describe the goal for the session (will be described in more detail during the briefing)
Have everybody introduce themselves
Go over the agenda (the activities planned for the session)
Do a quick warming-up activity (could also be part of the introductions, for example, see the Ball activity below)
Remind the participants of the brainstorm mindset (defer judgment, quantity over quality, ...). The facilitator will need to provide gentle reminders and motivators throughout the session.

A warming-up activity is essential to get the creative juices flowing. It warms up your creative muscles and allows the team to enter a different mental space. Ideally, it is a playful activity that gets everybody into action. Warm-ups can have different purposes, such as getting people out of their comfort zone, team building, or thinking out-of-the-box. Here are some example activities you could do to warm up the team for a creative session:

Ball
For this activity, you will need a ball. The person with the ball answers a central question, such as: "When do you get your best ideas?" and throws the ball to another person in the team. If the team members do not know each other yet, it is good to also state your name, e.g. "My name is Danny, and I get my best ideas when I'm walking the dog".

1000 uses
Pick a random object and ask the team to think up as many different uses for it as they can in 4 minutes. Get creative and outrageous. When the time is up, have each group share how many unique ideas they have generated.

Zombie cats (short version)
Challenge the team to find 2 things the participants all have in common with one another. Next, think up a team name with these two things (e.g. In the case of Zombie cats, everybody liked zombies and cats).

2. Briefing

Provide a clear focus for the session by briefing the team with the goal of the session and stating the question for the brainstorm. As already mentioned in 0. Preparation, the question often takes the form of "How might we ... ?". Make sure everybody understands the question and its relevance.

Mindmap
If the problem or question is not concrete or clear enough and consists of many different aspects, it can be helpful to start with creating a mindmap. Put the most essential word in the problem or question in the center of a large sheet of paper. Map aspects that have to do with this central word around it and draw in arrows to connect them. Keep it somewhere easy to refer to during the brainstorm session.

3. Diverge

The diverging step is the step during which idea generation takes place. To make sure everybody has some time to think without already being affected by group think, it is good to start off with individual idea generation, and then bring those ideas in for the group idea generation step.

Post-it brainstorm
Write the brainstorm question at the top of the sheet (or whiteboard, wall or table).
First, give everybody the opportunity to think up as many ideas on their own as they can and have them write them down one idea per post-it. Then, rotate around the group and have everybody stick one of their ideas to the sheet or board and explain it. If a post-it triggers new ideas, simply have the participants write them down on post-its and post them up when it is their turn.

Nominal group technique
This technique is similar, but post-its (or cards) are collected by the facilitator who reads them one by one. This way, there it is not known who is the originator of any of the ideas, which may allow people to share their ideas more freely. It can be necessary to clarify the meaning of certain ideas, through a short group discussion.

Example brainstorm session (diverge)

4. Converge

After the idea generation phase, you will have a large set of ideas. How to now select the most promising ones? The first step is often a form of grouping (to create an overview, discover themes, and filter out noise), followed by some form of voting for the actual selection.

Affinity grouping (Clustering)
Put exactly the same ideas on top of each other (be careful though: are there perhaps some key differences that you do not want to lose?). Put similar ideas next to each other. The participants can do it themselves, or the facilitator can do it immediately when an idea is posted up. Decide on a name for each cluster that represents its main shared characteristics. When the clustering is done, call the names for each cluster out loud and quickly summarize its contents, so everybody knows what is now on the board.

DOT voting
Give every participant a fixed number of votes (for example 3 or 5) they can assign to the ideas of their choice. You can use round stickers or have people draw circles with markers.
An interesting variation to this method is to first discuss the criteria for good solutions (cheap, fast, ...?) before everybody casts their votes.

Anonymous voting
To prevent participants from getting influenced by other people's votes, people can also vote anonymously. Simply have everybody write down their top 3 (or 5) ideas for themselves. Gather all the votes and determine which ideas were the most favorite.

5. Action plan

To prevent the brainstorm from ending with a lot of nice ideas but no action, end the session with creating an action plan. What are you going to do to get from idea to realization (next actions), who is going to do it (people), and when (deadlines)?

Next action	Who?	When?

Practical tips

There are various pitfalls to look out for when brainstorming. Here are our top 5 tips!

Groupthink - The urge to conform to the group can hamper creativity and prevent participants from sharing their ideas. This can be prevented by also including some activities that are done individually or even anonymously (such as individual idea generation, nominal group technique, anonymous voting).
Going off topic - Make sure the team has a concrete challenge or question to work on (see Preparation), otherwise precious creativity is going to get wasted on unrelated ideas.
Losing good ideas - Make sure ideas can be captured. Provide everybody with plenty of post-its, markers, and time to write.
Lack of decision-making - Generating ideas is fun, but at some point, decisions have to be made. Add a convergence phase to your brainstorm (grouping, voting) and end with an action plan.
Slipping into decision-making mode - We’re more conditioned to make choices than to come up with new ideas. It’s easy for a brainstorm to slip into decision-making mode before the best ideas have a chance to come out. A warming up activity helps to start off right. The person facilitating the brainstorm reminds people to stay open.

Assignments

Self assessment (1.1 Curiosity preparation)

1.1 Curiosity workshop assignment

In the 1.1 Curiosity workshop you will be asked to brainstorm what you might need to know about games and game development, so you can develop your own game in the next quartile.

To prepare for the brainstorm session, you have read this building block, so you are aware of the mindset and steps you will go through. The teacher will act as general facilitator, to guide all teams through this basic brainstorm session. Each team will also have its own facilitator to act as neutral chairman and facilitate the process within the group.

Decide who is going to be the facilitator within the team.
Get the necessary materials as indicated by the teacher
The teacher will guide you through the different phases of the brainstorm, with a predetermined set of basic techniques.
For the action plan, everybody in the team will choose their own research question of interest. Make sure that each question will add new relevant information, to prepare for the next quartile!

Project assignment

A brainstorm session can be a valuable activity in any project where you need to think up ideas. Simply go through the steps described in this building block of Preparation, Welcome, Briefing, Diverge, Converge and Action plan.

The most common moment to conduct such a brainstorm session is somewhere at the beginning of a new project, when you know what the problem is, but do not have a clear idea yet of what the solution could be. In this phase, you can also use brainstorming to determine how to approach a project.

Sources

Dam, R.F. & Teo, Y.S. (2020). Affinity Diagrams – Learn How to Cluster and Bundle Ideas and Facts. Interaction-design.org. Retrieved from: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/affinity-diagrams-learn-how-to-cluster-and-bundle-ideas-and-facts

De Ruijter, J. (n.d.). Anonymous voting. Hat rabbits. Retrieved from: https://hatrabbits.com/en/anonymous-voting/

IDEO (n.d.) Brainstorm rules. Retrieved from: https://www.designkit.org/methods/28.

IDEO (n.d.) Brainstorming. Retrieved from: https://www.ideou.com/pages/brainstorming

Straker, D. & Rawlinson, G. (2011). How to invent (almost) anything. Retrieved from: http://creatingminds.org/book/

Van der Meer, H. & Heijne, K. (2011). Crenovatie toolbox. Retrieved from: http://crenovatie.nl/toolbox/

Wycoff, J. (2004). Group brainstorming: dot voting with a difference. Innovation management.se Retrieved from: https://innovationmanagement.se/imtool-articles/group-brainstorming-dot-voting-with-a-difference/

For the teacher

Nederlands

Het doel van deze bouwsteen

Het doel van deze bouwsteen is de studenten wat basale vaardigheden aan te leren op het gebied van creatief problemen oplossen.

Plaats in het curriculum en module

Bij Saxion HBO-ICT wordt dit aangeboden in het eerste kwartiel van het eerste jaar, zodat studenten het kunnen toepassen gedurende hun schoolcarriere. Er is geen voorkennis vereist. De bouwsteen bevat wel een verwijzing naar Mindmappen. Vervolgstappen kunnen gericht worden op het verbreden van de creatieve vaardigheden of het verdiepen van de brainstormvaardigheden (meerdere vaardigheden en hun geschiktheid voor bepaalde situaties, uitbreiden van de mindset tot toepassing van alle 7 IDEO regels).

De bouwsteen is zo ontwikkeld dat het zelfstandig doorgenomen kan worden en vervolgens ingezet tijdens een project als workshop. Andere toepassingsmogelijkheden zijn ook mogelijk.

Voorbeeld lesplan (1.1 Curiosity)

Studenten nemen vooraf als huiswerk de bouwsteen door (30min).

Tijdens de workshop in de les kan de powerpoint gebruikt worden om even te checken wat de studenten nog is bijgebleven van de bouwsteen, kort de basis te herhalen, en vervolgens de studenten te begeleiden door een simpele brainstorm met een aantal basistechnieken. Het doel van de brainstorm in dit specifieke vak is te bedenken welke kennis nuttig voor ze kan zijn wanneer ze in het kwartiel erna zelf een game gaan bedenken en ontwikkelen.

Tips bij de opdrachten

Bij elke gedefinieerde opdracht kun je kort docenttips geven voor bijvoorbeeld de voorbereiding, uitvoering en begeleiding.

Tips voor projectbegeleiding

Tijdens projecten zijn er bepaalde momenten waarop een brainstorm erg nuttig kan zijn, wanneer er een duidelijk probleem ligt, maar het nog onduidelijk is wat nou een goede oplossing(srichting) zou zijn. Stimuleer studenten eens niet zomaar te gaan voor de eerste oplossing die bij ze op komt, maar eerst wat breder te denken d.m.v. een brainstorm. Een brainstorm kan ook ingezet worden om na te denken over een projectaanpak.

Coaching kan plaatsvinden op het stappenplan en de mindset.

Beoordelen

Voor 1.1 Curiosity wordt de brainstormworkshop niet beoordeeld. Het wordt gezien als een eerste kennismaking waarbij voor de docent de focus ligt op bewustwording van de studenten.

Een beoordeling kan plaatsvinden op het stappenplan en op de mindset.

Het activiteitenplan voor de brainstorm kan beoordeeld worden op: de aanwezigheid, logische volgorde en geschiktheid van de verschillende gekozen activiteiten. Voor eerstejaars kan men bijv. beginnen met de aanwezigheid en volgorde, wat in verdere verdieping uitgebouwd kan worden naar de geschiktheid.

De mindset kan voor eerstejaars eerst worden beperkt tot Defer judgment en Go for quantity, en voor hogerejaars worden uitgebreid tot alle 7 IDEO regels.

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