Effective ideas can improve the productivity of the project during its progress. However, the best ideas only come from structured brainstorming.
Maybe you are going through the process of brainstorming for new project ideas. When brainstorming, you should adopt scientific approaches if you don't want to make yourself or your team exhausted.
In this article, we will share the best-structured idea generating techniques you can use to collaborate with your team or client. Depending on the project, you can either follow a specific method or combine several to get the best results.
1. Mind Mapping
Mind mapping is the perfect brainstorming technique to create a new website, mobile app, creative visual, blog content, etc. It helps you to gather all possible ideas on one board so that you don’t miss crucial features.
You can effortlessly create professional-looking mind maps from the online drawing platform Creately.
2. Brainwriting
Brainwriting is collaborative ideation with complete anonymity. There are always some team members who may not share ideas due to the fear of criticism. You can bring all the team in one canvas for a fruitful idea through anonymous brainstorming.
You can use the Lucidchart app for brainwriting sessions. Let’s take an example that your team needs to improve the mobile app for gym members. Ask the team members from the UI/UX team, product team, etc., to submit their ideas on sticky notes in Lucidchart.
After the first round, shuffle the sticky notes and share them with the team members for idea improvements. Perform at least three rounds to gather multiple actionable ideas. Throughout the rounds, don’t disclose the names of the idea contributor.
3. Role Storming
You might use role storming or figuring storming if your team is repetitively coming up with similar ideas for each project. Fresh ideas require fresh perspectives and personalities.
You can’t change the team members before each project. However, thinking of being someone else could enable new thought processes.
This technique works best when you need to resolve issues from a client’s, customer’s, or an end user’s eye. Let’s consider you need to increase user engagement with your client’s app. The most appropriate way to perform role storming is through a visual collaboration tool like Mural.
Ask someone from the team members to share app feedback and feature requests from the customer’s point of view. You could pull some app feedback data and use those during role storming.
4. Starbursting
Starbursting is the appropriate brainstorming technique for you if you present a project solution to the client. Furthermore, if your team already came up with an idea, starbursting can help you elaborate on the issues that need addressing.
If you’re going to develop a website for your client, you can present a six-point strategy board to improve overall website performance. Put the name of the website or the product in the middle of the star. Then, write what, who, when, where, how, and why at the tip of the star.
Discuss among the team members to form questions around the main idea. You can write down these questions besides the relevant star points. Answering these questions will construct a solid strategy for website development.
Visual Paradigm is one of the many online drawing tools that can help you with starbursting brainstorming templates. You can access the template website and choose one to edit.
5. Stepladder Technique
Use the stepladder method if your team is experiencing a negative impact from the loudest person in the meeting or the first few ideas dominating all. This technique is the ideal brainstorming session only if your team’s size is within 15 people.
During the ideation session through Google Meet, share a discussion topic like creating attractive visuals for social media. Now, ask the entire team to go outside, except for two people.
Once the remaining two share their ideas, ask one member to come inside to share another idea. Now, discuss current ideas and then call another member. The members shouldn’t discuss ideas among them while staying outside the meeting.
Follow the above steps until all the team members have shared and heard the ideas. Now, list all the viable ideas on a digital whiteboard for the final collaborative discussion.
6. Brain-Netting
Bran-netting involves the usage of cloud storage and real-time collaboration tools. This kind of brainstorming suits the teams who work remotely from different time zones. This method ensures 100% participation throughout the team.
You can use cloud apps like Slack, Google Forms, etc., to collect ideas related to issues such as improving app UI/UX, website code-base, content ideas, getting customers, etc. Organize these ideas in Google Sheets. You can also use Google Sheets to collect ideas.
Set up a virtual meeting to discuss all ideas and pick the best ones for implementation. During the process of idea-collection, you can also follow anonymity to encourage participation.
7. Reverse Brainstorming
You might want to use this technique if you’re testing a new product, app, website, etc. If you need to resolve a recurring issue, you can also implement this brainstorming to find solutions. Many online collaboration tools will offer you templates, like the one in Miro.
During a brainstorming session, ask the team members to share ideas on how to fail a system or product. Following are some practical scenarios where you can implement this method:
- Write down the possible causes of app crashes and then work on those clues to patch the app security system.
- Write the worst advertisement copies for your marketing campaigns and then improve them to suit your product.
- Outline a failure for the team and then work on it to discover new objectives to avoid a failure.
Brainstorming Lets You Hunt the Best Ideas
With so many gig workers and professionals offering every monetizable skill on the market, only fresh ideas will help you stand out from the crowd.
These brainstorming techniques will enable you or your team to generate the best possible ideas efficiently and effectively. Furthermore, let all the team members participate in ideation with equal importance through online visual collaboration.