Ideate — generate options before judging
Produce many candidate solutions, deferring evaluation until you have quantity.
Why it works
Generating and judging at the same time chokes idea flow: the moment you evaluate, you stop producing. Separating ideation from selection lets quantity surface the non-obvious option that judgment would have killed early. The mechanism is protecting divergent thinking from premature convergence.
How to do it
- Set a quantity target (e.g. 30 ideas in 15 minutes) so volume, not quality, is the goal.
- Defer all criticism — capture even bad ideas, which often trigger good adjacent ones.
- Only after the timer ends, switch modes and cluster and select.
Evidence
Mechanistic for the stage as a whole, with a real caveat from research: separating generation from evaluation helps, but group brainstorming as usually run underperforms the same people ideating alone and pooling results. A meta-analytic integration across brainstorming studies confirms this productivity loss is a robust, replicated effect rather than an isolated finding. (mechanistic)
Decades of research find face-to-face group brainstorming produces fewer and no-better ideas than individuals working separately (production blocking, social loafing, evaluation apprehension). Ideate alone first, then combine.
Sources
- Diehl, M., & Stroebe, W. (1987). Productivity Loss in Brainstorming Groups: Toward the Solution of a Riddle. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53(3), 497-509. About this work
- Mullen, B., Johnson, C., & Salas, E. (1991). Productivity Loss in Brainstorming Groups: A Meta-Analytic Integration. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 12(1), 3-23. About this work
Common mistake
Running ideation as a live group free-for-all, where the loudest voice anchors everyone and quiet, often-better ideas never surface. Individual generation first beats it.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for Design Thinking, Step by Step
- Empathize — understand the user first
Observe and interview the people you are designing for before forming any solution.
- Define — frame the right problem
Synthesize your research into a single, sharp problem statement before solving.
- Prototype — make it cheap and real
Build the roughest possible version that lets you learn something specific.
- Test — let users break it
Put the prototype in front of real users and treat their confusion as data.
- Iterate — treat the stages as a loop, not a line
Cycle back to earlier stages as testing reveals you framed the wrong problem.
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