A Designer’s Guide To Brainstorms That Are Actually Useful

Rule No. 1: Always say “yes.”

[Illustration: Rogotanie/iStock]

BY ELI WOOLERY9 MINUTE READ

The Apollo 13 Mission Control team faced a huge number of seemingly insurmountable obstacles after an oxygen tank exploded on board the 1970 mission to the moon. They needed to find a new route that would get the astronauts back to Earth quickly with a limited supply of life-supporting fuel and power.

The most pressing problem was a buildup of carbon dioxide in the ship. Without a replacement scrubber, stored out of reach in a different module in the craft, the crew would soon asphyxiate from their own exhalations.

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In the 1995 movie version of this dramatic event, Apollo 13, Flight Director Gene Kranz (played by Ed Harris) assembles the top engineers and scientists in a room for a brainstorming session. He tells the group to forget the flight plan, and that they would be “improvising a new mission.” Standing in front of a chalkboard, he quickly sketches the original route of the ship. Then, when one of the engineers suggests a new route, Kranz alters the original route to show a slingshot approach that would use the moon’s gravity to whip the astronauts back toward Earth. 
In a later scene, a group of engineers tasked with devising a new filtration system dumps the same items aboard Apollo 13 onto a table. They proceed to prototype a fix that the crew can build from the objects at hand, ending up with a literal “duct-tape solution.”

In each case, the route to resolving the problems seemed relatively straightforward, if fraught with urgency: get a bunch of smart people in a room, and have them collectively come up with ideas until the best solution was found. We can assume that the film was faithful to what happened in the real life control room in Houston, but what conditions created such a successful environment for brainstorming?

The term “brainstorm” was popularized by the ad agency executive Alex Osborn in his 1953 book Applied Imagination (though he had outlined his method in a 1948 book, Your Creative Power). Osborn claimed that by organizing a group to attack a creative problem “commando fashion, with each stormer attacking the same objective,” creative output could be doubled.

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Osborn created two main rules for a successful brainstorm:

1. Defer judgement
2. Reach for quantity

Deferring judgment reduces social inhibitions in the group—no one would be stigmatized for shouting out a crazy idea. By reaching for quantity, participants would boost their overall creative output and increase the likelihood of coming up with innovative solutions.

Brainstorming in a group might not work as well for original ideas, as compared to individuals working independently. However, brainstorming adds value to the creative process in ways that don’t just involve coming up with ideas.

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BRAINSTORMING ISN’T ABOUT NEW IDEAS, REALLY

It turns out that the power of brainstorming doesn’t really come from spontaneously generating new ideas. Rather, the real strength in brainstorming stems from the process’s ability to:

• Quickly generate lots of ideas, to help get an overview of the conceptual landscape. These are not necessarily new ideas (or good ideas). They may have been brewing for a while as individuals considered the problem beforehand. These ideas can become the seeds for solutions, to be investigated with prototypes. [The] goal is to give you a mass quantity of ideas quickly . . . not solutions, but the seeds to possible solutions. Solutions take real hard work. Brainstorming gets you the lay of the land quickly for possible solution areas to investigate. But good solutions are like body building, there’s no way to cheat the hours of the gym you got to put in,” says Art Sandoval, vice president of engineering at LUNAR Design.
• Gather a team into a physical space where they can share perspectives on the problem and are all aware of the potential solution spaces as they are surfaced. Done well, it can energize a team (and done poorly, it can deflate one).
• Get clients or stakeholders to buy into the design process, and also learn what is important to these decision makers. “[Brainstorms are] excellent at helping clients buy into the creative process…they get to join in on the brainstorms, they see lots of ideas, they get to vote for their favorites and a dialogue happens during the voting process that is crucial,” says Yona Belfort, product designer at Vital Innovation. “Some kind of sorting always follows a brainstorm, and it’s during this process that one can learn from the client. What have they already done or are currently doing? What can’t they do? Won’t they do? And most importantly, what are they excited about?”

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Generating ideas, sharing perspectives, and gaining stakeholder buy-in are lofty goals. To achieve them with brainstorming requires careful planning. In the next few sections, we’ll cover how to properly set the stage for success.

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BEFORE THE BRAINSTORM

A key part of the brainstorming process is the facilitator—someone who will lead the session, keep track of time, and set up the space for the group. This facilitator can also make sure that the group comes prepared with a mission framed by problem statements.

SET A MISSION

Your brainstorming session should have a clear goal. What problem(s) are you surfacing ideas for? What is the best method for coming up with this goal?

Stanford’s d.school design thinking framework alternates between generative (flaring) and selective (focusing) phases. As you empathize, you gather data and stories from your users, generating insights and flaring out. As you begin to synthesize that information and come closer to defining your point of view, you become selective about the solution space you will pursue, and you focus.

In the ideate phase, you flare out again as you generate a multitude of ideas and select promising solutions for prototyping. Doing this helps your team step beyond obvious solutions, harness the collective creativity of the team, and discover new and unexpected areas to explore.

How do you go about generating those ideas? The POV that you generated in the define phase is a great platform to help start the process. Using your POV problem statement, come up with “How might we … ?” topics that are subsets of the entire problem. If your POV is well constructed, these topics should fall naturally out of it.

SET UP THE SPACE

For a good brainstorm to happen, the energy in the room needs to be right. First, pick a space that has large whiteboards or room on a wall to set up poster-sized Easel Pads. The room should also be somewhat enclosed if there is a worry about bothering other teams (brainstorming can get boisterous)—but there are alternate techniques for a quiet brainstorm, which we’ll get to a little later.

GET INTO THE RIGHT HEADSPACE

If you’re coming into a brainstorming session from individual work, it can be a little jarring to adopt a collaborative mindset—and hard to ramp up your energy level accordingly. The facilitator should spend a few minutes getting everyone acclimated. There are quick, improv-based techniques for this, like Sound Ball or Knife, Baby, and Angry Cat. 

LIMIT THE TIME

A brainstorm can quickly run out of steam if the facilitator doesn’t establish time limits and keep the conversation moving. Setting a time limit for each topic is a good idea (15 to 20 minutes works well, depending on how many topics you need to cover). You can also set a goal for the number of ideas per topic (e.g., 100 ideas in 20 minutes). Use a Time Timer so everyone has a visual indicator and to benefits from adrenaline-powered sprints as the time begins to run short.

During the brainstorm

When the brainstorm kicks off, the moderator’s job is to keep the momentum going, stay on topic, and make sure all ideas are captured.

ALWAYS SAY YES

To keep the energy high and the ideas flowing, a good brainstorm shares a lot in common with the improv technique of “Yes, and . . .” When an idea is put forth, participants should be encouraged to build on it, putting a positive spin on the contribution. Critical energy can be diverted into productive ideation in this way. For example, “Yes, I like that idea, and we could go even further by . . .”

STAY ON TOPIC

In the heated environment of a brainstorm, it’s easy to get sidetracked and start diving down rabbit holes that have no relation to the problem statement at hand. It’s important for the facilitator to gently guide participants back to the current topic. Sometimes this is best done by noting adjacent topics and mentioning that the group can come back to it later or during a future session.

BE VISUAL AND HEADLINE

One way to run a brainstorm is to have the facilitator serve as scribe, logging all the ideas as they come. Another is to arm the group with sticky notes and sharpies, so that they can walk up to the board, verbally share an idea, and put a summary of the idea on the board.  

Either way, it’s important to be visual. Encourage quick sketches—these will help to clarify and group ideas.

Also, ideas should be headlined as they are produced. A participant can say, “We could create a way for the user to leave feedback for us directly via a comment form,” which someone would then summarize as “Feedback comment form.”

Whatever method you choose, ideas should be shared one at a time. This allows the scribe to write them, or the participant to be heard as they post their idea to the board.

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AFTER THE BRAINSTORM

When the brainstorm is finished and there are a hundred ideas on the board, it’s easy enough to give high fives all around and walk away without really having accomplished much. Leave a little time after the brainstorm to review and capture the ideas that were shared.

NARROW DOWN, BUT NOT TOO FAST

If you’ve run a productive brainstorm, you’ll likely have a lot of different ideas on the board—some funny, some weird, perhaps some verging on insane. It can be tempting to cut any idea that isn’t feasible, but by doing so you may be tripping up the ideation process. Sometimes good ideas can come from a place that initially seemed silly.

Instead, give the participants a way to select ideas across multiple criteria. One way to do this is to use color-coded sticky dots or pieces of colored Post-its. Each color can signify a person’s top choices in each category, such as the lowest hanging fruit, most delightful, or the long shot.

CAPTURE AND MOVE TO PROTOTYPING

Once you’ve selected ideas in each category, carry them into prototyping, ensuring that you don’t walk away from the session with just the safest choice. Use a phone to photograph the whole board, and then extract the top ideas in a document which can be used to kick off the prototyping process (Google Docs is great for this).

Prototyping is a flaring part of the design thinking process. Even if a selected idea is so crazy it doesn’t seem worthy of a test, figure out what’s attractive in that solution, and use that to inspire a prototype. The goal is to come into the prototype phase with multiple solutions to build and then test.

Remember that brainstorming is just one step in the process of coming up with a solution. In all likelihood, you won’t come out of a brainstorming session armed with the exact idea that you’ll bring to your users. But you will hopefully compile an overview of the conceptual landscape, gain a shared perspective on the problem with your team, or get key stakeholders to buy into the design process. All of these things will help seed the minds of your team.

How Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Are Changing Things for Marketers

Every so often, new and shiny marketing objects come along and become the subject of a great deal of hype about how they will change the world. The phenomenon is so typical, that Gartner developed a methodology to represent where each new promising technology is in the "hype cycle."

Of course, some new technologies don't deliver, and yet others prove to be transformational. Usually, however, changing the world takes longer than initially thought.

Marketers are now talking (again) about how augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) will change marketing, so it's timely to take a step back and put a practical spin on what is likely to happen and what is simply hype.

Augmented Reality

AR is the superimposition of digital data and "objects" into a real-time camera view of a live environment. This technology has been around for a long time, but has only recently begun to be significantly applied to marketing.

There are two basic versions of this technology: Overlay AR and 3D AR.

In the Overlay AR environment, the digital data or objects are not linked to the scale or specific layout of the physical world. The digital object is simply triggered by some event or data (such as a GPS coordinate.) A good example is the Pokémon Go app from Niantic Inc.; users can search for imaginary Pokémon characters, and when they "find" them the character appears superimposed on the video stream from their smartphone camera.

• The digital objects can be images, or they can also be other data (such as video; audio; numbers, such as outside temperatures and coordinates; or text data, such as names of buildings.)
• Often, an object is placed using GPS coordinates (as in the case of Pokémon Go) or it's triggered via some sort of visual cue, such as a QR code or a special image placed on a card.

3D AR is an innovation of Kaon Interactive (my company). A digital 3D product model is placed into the camera view of the physical space, with some key characteristics:

• The object is scaled to fit, with the appropriate dimensions, relative to the physical space around it (e.g., a small object that fits on a table, or a large floor-standing object, both of which have the correct dimensions relative to the table or the floor and walls).
• The object is placed in a position without the use of the visual cues or special cards, in a way that allows the object to "remain" in the same place even when the camera (the phone or tablet) is moved away and then brought back to where the object was placed. Think of it as object permanence, in a digital sense.
• The object is interactive: The user can open doors, remove parts, spin, turn etc. while it is being viewed as if in the physical environment.

Virtual Reality

With VR, users put on a headset or goggles, and they are "placed" into a digital/virtual representation of a physical environment so that they can look and explore it as they would in the real world, as if they were in that environment. When they move their head, they see the space as if they had looked in that direction in the real world. This effect is known as "immersion."

VR usually uses a headset either with a built-in vision system and dedicated computer or a headpiece that simply encapsulates the user's smartphone to use as the display and computer system. Examples include Google Cardboard, which allows users to use their own smartphones in a headset experience, and Oculus Rift, which is a high-definition headset that connects to an external computer.

In many VR games, in which the user can "drive" a car or "fire" a weapon, the application reacts appropriately to that user's action in an interactive manner, giving the player a sense of presence and action.

360 Videos

Another application type, the 360-degree video, is often confused with AR or VR. However, 360 video is a video of an actual (real life) scene that is taken with multiple cameras/lenses pointed in every direction at the same time. The effect is to give the viewer the option to "turn" in any direction and see the action unfold from that perspective, in real-time. (Here is an example.)

The user can pan across the video using the mouse (or touching the screen on a tablet or phone) while the action continues. There is usually no interactivity in this kind of video, other than the user's changing the viewing perspective. The storyline follows the same linear path, but can be experienced differently, depending on which direction the viewer chooses to view at any point in time.

These 360 video experiences can be viewed within an immersive headset (just like VR), on a screen (e.g., on YouTube or Facebook), or in a specially designed room with large screens all around.

Marketing Applications

These new platforms allow for innovative ways to engage customers in an experiential manner. As with all new solutions, the key to being successful is to marry the content of the experience with the appropriate technical approach.

Showing something in VR for the sake of the VR experience has no inherent marketing value to the customer, other than the "cool factor." (In this example, consumer advertisers have been experimenting with overlay AR apps for alcoholic beverages as a way to increase loyalty and engagement with customers. This approach has the "cool factor," but the videos aren't inherently tied to the code on the bottle and could just as easily have been viewed without the AR trigger.) After the cool-factor effect wears off, however, the company will likely not continue to achieve the intended marketing objective.

When it makes sense to overlay marketing information on a real-world scene (say, for example, showing a unique internal product feature that can't be seen from the outside), then there is a memorable and meaningful association of the technology to the marketing message. Customers appreciate these kinds of experiences because they have both the emotional connection and the benefit of learning something relevant and useful.

For complex products and solutions, showing something in a digital immersive environment can be highly effective because the experience is difficult to deliver with real-world products or environments, and the customer is using the immersive platform to learn about the relevant value of the product or solution.

When deciding on how to use VR and AR in the marketing mix, think about what is a practical application given the customer's environment, and how the three key elements of engagement (sensory, intellectual, and emotional connections) will be used to deliver an effective marketing experience.

A couple of examples can illustrate the innovative impact of AR and VR in marketing:

1. 3D AR showing how a new product will fit into a customer's environment. For a consumer application, a good example is Wayfair, which has a 3D AR app that shows its furniture in the customer's home. For a B2B application, applications can show how large industrial equipment can fit into a manufacturing assembly line, or how lab equipment can be placed effectively into an automated clinical diagnostics lab.
2. VR for complex B2B solutions. A recent example is a VR experience in which an IT manager can explore a virtual data center to see how the software-defined network (SDN) digital data reconfigures physical data center hardware in real-time. This is impossible to show in a real-world data center (because the data is not visible, and the configuration of the equipment happens inside the servers and switches.)
   
   These complex hardware and software products can be displayed in an immersive environment that provides the user with the sense that they are in the real data center, but uncovers how the software works, providing a clearer understanding.

Immersive AR and VR applications have the potential to change the connection between customers and companies because of the opportunity to deliver the most engaging, personalized, and useful experiences.

Judicious selection of the appropriate tools and venues will provide innovative marketers with effective and valuable solutions.

.#SocialSkim: Facebook Messenger Upgraded for Business, a Big Blow to Snapchat:

In this week's 'Skim: Facebook unleashes Messenger 2.1 with all-new business-friendly features, and it's reportedly working on a revolutionary futuristic video-chat device; Snapchat is dealt a new blow with stock market rejections, and it joins fight against terror and extremism; Pinterest homes in on search with new selling focus; and Facebook's big algorithm change will make you rethink your website.

Also: a guide to being the best B2B on social media; Facebook's artificial intelligence system gone haywire; and much more...

Skim for this week's round of must-read social tidbits!

1. Facebook woos businesses with Messenger 2.1

The social network wants more businesses to use its Messenger to communicate with customers, and it has introduced a suite of updates to the platform to do just that. Messenger 2.1 adds natural language processing (NLP), making it easier for companies to build automated conversations for consumers.

Messenger 2.1 also integrates new call-to-action buttons on Facebook Pages, such as "Shop Now" and "Get Support," in an effort to drive more people to use Messenger as a way to communicate with their favorite brands.

See what else Facebook has in store with Messenger 2.1, and how your company could take advantage!

2. Snap Inc. dealt blow, rejected from S&P 500, FTSE Russell

The last thing Snapchat's parent company, Snap Inc., needed was more bad news. But that's exactly what it got. Some Snap insiders were finally able to sell their stock last week because the company's lockup expiration came to pass, but that's not what drove the brand's shares to trade at a record low of $13.10.

It turns out Snap divided up its classes of stock in a way that made the S&P 500 deem the company ineligible for listing, and the company also found out it won't be on the London-based FTSE Russell because Snap's public investors don't have voting rights.

Snap Inc. continues to show its innovative spirit with the launch of new features and products, but will it be enough to quell Wall Street's fear and make up for the halving of its share price since its initial public offering in March?

3. Facebook reportedly working on a dedicated video chat device

Facebook's hardware ambitions remain intact, with a new report from Bloomberg suggesting the social giant is hard at work on a dedicated video chat device that would make users feel they were in the same room as the person they were virtually speaking with.

Bloomberg suggests that a prototype is already being tested in homes, and that it features a wide-angle camera lens, microphones, and speakers that are all powered by artificial intelligence.

The ambitious project makes sense, considering the goals laid out by an executive of Facebook's experimental lab, who proclaimed the social network's desire to "create and ship new, category-defining consumer products that are social-first." This device could be just that.

4. Pinterest pushes further into search with home feed change

Pinterest mobile app users will find a newly minted search bar at the top of their home feeds that they can use to dive right into the platform to discover rather than having to navigate to the app's Explore tab.

Lens, Pinterest's visual search tool that enables users to query for inspiration with their device's camera, is also now available in the iOS home feed, and will soon rollout to Android.

The virtual pinboard's monthly mobile text search increased 40% over the past year, with 85% of all searches on the platform now occurring on mobile. It seems Pinterest is carving out a niche: while consumers go to traditional search engines to find specific information, Pinterest users come to the platform when they're not quite sure what they want yet.

n fact, 97% of searches on Pinterest don't include a brand name, and millions of users are searching 2-3 months in advance of making a purchase.

5. Facebook to start ranking websites with faster load times higher in News Feed

If you haven't already reviewed your website speed performance, but you still expect to broaden your reach on Facebook, it's time to get going.

Facebook tweaked its algorithm last week to increase visibility of posts that contain links to webpages that load quickly, a change that will roll out over the coming months. With 40% of visitors abandoning a website that doesn't load in under three seconds, Facebook's algorithm change serves as an extra nudge to marketers and website teams to change their ways.

The algorithm change comes as the social network tries to match its content to users based on device and network speeds, with users on slower connections receiving fewer videos, etc. Time to start a discussion with you IT department and development teams!

6. Facebook allows publishers to set CPM targets

Companies using Facebook's Audience Network to run ads on the social network now have much more power in bidding for their ad placements. The social giant did away with price floors that set a minimum bid for placements, now allowing publishers to set CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions) targets; it's accepting all bids above a publisher's target, and some below, in order to help publishers achieve their desired CPM.

The change should help brands better forecast ad revenue, and the new tool will also let them set country, region, and rest-of-world CPM targets to save time. Interested? Visit the Facebook Audience Network Help Center for details.

7. Snapchat joins the tech fight against terrorism

Snap Inc. has joined the task force created by Facebook, Google and YouTube, Twitter, and Microsoft last month to help stem the spread of terrorism and extremist propaganda online. The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) was founded as a shared database across tech companies that enabled each to block uploads from users that had been identified by another as a threat.

The forum held a workshop for the first time, last week, and hosted security heavyweights, including the United Kingdom Home Secretary, the United States Secretary of Homeland Security, and representatives of the European Union and United Nations. We can be glad to see some normally fierce competitors coming together for the greater good.

8. Facebook Stories become public

Facebook users—in this case, most likely celebrities and other public figures—are now able to post Facebook Stories for all of their followers to see, whether they're friends or not. And some indications show posting Stories publicly could lead to much higher engagement or exposure in the News Feed than normal posts.

For now, Facebook has no specific timing to share on when brand Pages will be able to post Stories, but we have no doubt it's in the works.

Though the social network has been quick to share stats on its success on Instagram Stories and WhatsApp Stories, no numbers have been shared just yet for Facebook's Stories in its flagship app, possibly indicating slow adoption by users.

9. A guide to being the best B2B on social media

Social media isn't what it used to be, and brands can't expect to generate massive reach organically and pat themselves on the back because they managed to produce their own GIF or meme. Times have changed, targeting options have advanced, and the opportunities to vary your content type and hyper-target your audiences have grown.

Leap Rate has a couple of tricks and reminders to make you think twice about how you're using your social platforms, especially since social media is set to eat up 20% of businesses' marketing budgets within the next five years.

Read through some top tips—rom correctly defining your audience and using employees as brand advocates, to optimizing post calls to action and dedicating a budget to promoting social media posts.

10. We'll wrap with Facebook's artificial intelligence agents that went off the rails

Here's one to keep you up at night. Researchers at Facebook reportedly had to shut down two of its artificial intelligence (AI) agents when they began speaking to each other in a language that they created, and which their human owners couldn't understand.

The event highlights a risk of AI for which Tesla's Elon Musk criticized Mark Zuckerburg after the Facebook CEO claimed, without naming Musk directly, that it was "irresponsible" to drum up doomsday scenarios regarding AI.

In any scenario, it's a potentially troubling development that we'll certainly want to keep an eye on.