Introduction

Design thinking has become mainstream. Many job postings require design thinking skills and experiences. Even the United States government is focused on design thinking. The Presidential Innovation Fellowship program requires design thinking experience in all job descriptions.

Design Thinking, and especially IDEO’s Human Centered Design (HCD) are great methodologies to solve problems based on customer empathy. The emphasis on understanding your target customer’s needs first-hand is invaluable to properly solve problems. IDEO has done a fantastic job to empower individuals, teams, and organizations to apply their version of design thinking, HCD.

Focusing on customer empathy through direct engagement, creative ideation to develop rough prototypes for fast feedback, and a structured process for implementation, IDEO has become the lead in promoting design thinking. Even better, the organization provides a ton of free material to help anyone get up-to-speed with HCD, as well as formal training from IDEOU.

However, there are two glaring weaknesses within design thinking, and especially HCD – brainstorming and lack of a systematic methodology to evaluate and select ideas. If you are not familiar with IDEO, they have staked their brand on the power of brainstorming. Unfortunately, decades of research and application has shown that brainstorming is a less-than-ideal way to generate new ideas.

Brainstorming

We all “brainstorm” individually or in small groups to toss ideas around and talk through various challenges. Ad hoc idea generation is helpful and a great way to “throw around” ideas (free association) and warm-up prior to using systematic methods of creative ideation. This warm-up is often a great way to pull “top-of-mind” information from coworkers and then dig deeper to develop a large number of alternative ideas.

However, formal brainstorming is not very effective to generate new ideas. Most research on idea generation has shown that brainstorming typically does not result in valuable ideas. Most brainstorms are just a group of people haphazardly sharing ideas and rarely solving real problems. Yet even with all the research on the flaws of brainstorming, it is still widely used in most organizations. The majority of research has shown that brainstorming is not effective in generating quality ideas and, furthermore, that group brainstorming typically inhibits creative thinking. Research has confirmed that individuals develop a higher quantity of quality ideas individually than in a group, leading to the conclusion that brainstorming is less effective than individual ideation.

Most inefficiencies during a brainstorming session arise due to individuals dominating the discussion (the loudest voice wins), redundant ideas, cognitive uniformity where individuals feel pressure to support other ideas, members giving up on the group, and fear of having ideas evaluated or judged (the fear of looking stupid). Early ideas also tend to have a disproportionate influence on the rest of the discussion.

Groupthink, where participants believe something just because others support it, is another negative. Brainstorming also results in high levels of productivity loss and impediments to ideation. These issues arise when members wait to speak or listen to others. Another negative to brainstorms is one person trying to push their ideas or agendas deceptively through the group exercise. Finally, the main negative of brainstorms is the cost. The cost of brainstorming regarding time spent and individual dollars per hour can be the same as throwing money in the trash. There are much better ways to develop new, creative ideas.

So why do so many business leaders rely on brainstorming? An easy answer is “it just feels right.” Intuitively, it makes sense that a group of people sharing ideas should generate high quality, original, diverse ideas; unfortunately, this is not the case. Many of us feel that “two heads are better than one” and that collaboration allows you to bounce ideas off each other — that brainstorming is a fair way to allow everyone to contribute ideas and leverage buy-in of decisions.

Unfortunately, this attempt at building consensus wastes valuable time and resources. It is much better to allow everyone to ideate individually using proven tools and techniques (divergent thinking) and then meet as a group to evaluate and refine the best ideas (convergent thinking). Collaboration is more effective than individualism at evaluating and expanding ideas into innovative solutions.

Bad Solution Park

I was always a fan of delaying ideation until after a complete understanding of the problem was understood. However, human nature wants to immediately jump to solutions (i.e., new ideas). I was always challenged trying to have groups stop shouting out solutions during a formal problem-solving session. Trying to get the group to define the problem first, then develop potential solutions later (new ideas), was an engaging challenge.

I did not want to kill everyone’s enthusiasm, but I wanted to avoid early ideas which would often anchor the group members, resulting in a reluctance to develop new ideas later. However, once I started studying and practicing TRIZ, the theory of creative problem solving, I found a great method to gather these early ideas, while allowing for more systematic ideation later.

Oxford Creativity, located in England has been teaching TRIZ for decades and uses a great, common-sense way to capture these early ideas without stopping participants from sharing their ideas or killing enthusiasm. Oxford Creativity utilizes the Bad Solution Park, to gather these initial ideas utilizing the Bad Solution Park is a great tool to supercharge design thinking. It is a great way to record the top-of-mind ideas while simultaneously defining and understanding the problem.

This is how it is done.

Everyone writes their initial ideas on sticky notes.
The notes are gathered and the ideas are recorded in the Bad Solution Park.
Each idea is then reviewed for its good and bad points.
The group then analyzes the problem in more detail. If new ideas come to mind, they are added onto the Bad Solution Park.

The reason these top-of-mind ideas are categorized as bad solutions, is to ensure everyone realizes these are not the final ideas or even the best ideas. Typically, people love their own ideas and it is very difficult for them to be open to possibly better ideas from others. Naming these initial ideas “bad solutions” ensures that everyone realizes their ideas are not the best, or even good, they are just starting points to find better solutions later.

After this initial “brain dump”, the team can then work on analyzing the problem in detail, without focusing on solutions; though if any ideas come to mind, they are “parked” in the Bad Solutions Park. The capturing and parking of bad solutions as they occur, allows these ideas to be analyzed and improved at the appropriate time. This assumes the group keeps working on better solutions as the problem is properly analyzed.

Gathering these initial ideas ensures that participants will be allowed to be creative and stay engaged. The Bad Solution Park keeps participants engaged while ensuring a systematic and comprehensive problem analysis is conducted. The Bad Solution Park is a much better alternative to traditional brainstorming, which is random and haphazard. And this is where design thinking can be further improved and supercharged.

Systematic Creativity

The next step to supercharge design thinking is with systematic ideation. The initial top-of-mind ideas that have been parked within the Bad Solution Park, are just starting points. Using only brainstorming, problem-solving teams unfortunately implement these top-of-mind ideas, missing potentially better solutions developed with systematic ideation (after the problem is analyzed).

There are three systematic ideation methodologies to develop new ideas;

Inside-the-box
Outside-the-box
Hybrid of both

I like to use all three as they do not take much time, and help expand perspectives and ensure a variety of alternative ideas are developed. Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT) is a great method for inside-the-box ideation, whereas Lateral Thinking techniques are excellent for developing outside-the-box ideas, and a hybrid of both is a simple-to-learn, and simple-to-use tool called SCAMPER.

Inside the Box

Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT) forces you to develop new ideas using only the attributes available within the problem, not venturing beyond the product or service (staying within the “closed world” of the product). The five tools within SIT are:

Subtraction
Multiplication
Division
Task unification and
Attribute dependency

SIT focuses on the common elements of a product, service, or process to devise new ideas. It is a great way to pragmatically practice creativity and improve or change a product, service, or process.

For example, what does powdered soup, a stationary bicycle, a baby seat that attaches to a table, and contact lenses have in common? They have all subtracted something from the original product to develop something all new. The solutions were already part of the product, not from the “outside world”.

Task unification makes an existing feature of a process or product work harder by making it take on additional responsibilities. Tasks which were previously independent, now work together. An existing resource or attribute is assigned a new, additional task. For example, a director was working on a musical and did not have enough budget to hire an orchestra. To solve this problem, he had the actors play the instruments, requiring the actors to take on a new task, becoming actors and musicians. The tasks of acting and playing music were unified.

Another example of task unification is leveraging the elements within a grocery store to encourage people to stay longer; not looking outside the store for ideas. For example, list all the attributes of a grocery store (e.g., shelves, bathrooms, aisles, deli department, butcher, bakery, refrigerators, freezers, shopping carts), then choose one attribute and take a few minutes to think of ways it can help to keep people in the store longer.

For example, choose shopping carts. Some ideas could be to make the carts difficult to turn, or install small video screens to entertain and provide recipes or weekly specials. The carts can even be equipped with toys for children, so they want to keep playing, possibly forcing the parents to stay longer and keep shopping.

Another interesting task unification was developed by Nissan. When a car’s tires are inflated to the proper air pressure the horn beeps. This eliminates the need to carry an air pressure gauge or rely on inaccurate gas station compressors. The horn now has two tasks:

alert other cars, pedestrians, animals, etc., to possible dangers
provide a signal when the air in the tire is at the proper pressure

SIT provides five tools to develop new ideas systematically, using only the elements within the “closed world” of the problem. This method ensures focus and concentration on just the product, service, or process within the problem. Unlike SIT which uses the “closed world” of the problem, lateral thinking uses the “open world” to find solutions outside the elements of the problem.

Outside the Box

Edward de Bono coined the term “lateral thinking” to describe a way of thinking which leads to a wide-range of insights for developing creative ideas. Lateral thinking is not about digging a deeper hole to find a solution, but looking somewhere else for alternative ideas. Lateral thinking provides the process for changing concepts and perceptions.

This ideation method forces you to break out of the comfort zone of what you only know and allows you to explore other possibilities to ensure the best idea is found. The goal is to move away from fixed pattern recognition that our brains love, and focus on movement and change.

Lateral thinking focuses on changing perspectives to develop new ideas. It is a proactive, deliberate way to continually move forward to develop new ideas rather than finding an immediate solution. Not all the ideas will be useful, but it is important to focus on quantity and deal with quality later. A powerful tool within lateral thinking is random word. Random word uses a word that is not associated with the problem to develop new connections which are used to create new ideas.

Random word introduces an unrelated word to the problem to create new ideas. It forces a relationship between seemingly dissimilar things. This simple tool allows the generation of new ideas by connecting unrelated words to spur new ideas outside of the problem.

Doctor de Bono offered the example of the randomly chosen word “nose” being applied to an office photocopier. This led to the idea that the copier could produce a lavender smell to alert staff when it was low on paper. Using traditional ideation methods to improve a photocopier, you would never think of associating a photocopier and the human nose.

You would probably associate a photocopier with more obvious connections, such as a telephone, new ink processes, different roller materials, and so on. Most people would never think of using such an unrelated word like “nose” to develop a new photocopier. This is the power of using the “outside world” to develop new ideas.

Most innovative, game-changing products are the combination of two dissimilar items. By introducing an unrelated word, you can develop new, unexpected ideas. Select “words” far from the problem you are working on. Developing similar points between dissimilar things can lead to new insights. Constructing two dissimilar concepts into a new context is a key behavior for developing new innovations.

The following examples illustrate how combining seemingly dissimilar things can create innovative products.

Computers + coffee shops = cyber cafes
Dolls + adult life = Barbie®
Audio + mobility = Walkman® and
Mobile telephone + camera + internet = smartphone

The following example shows how to use the random word technique to create new ways to promote your consulting service.

Choose a random word, perhaps by opening a dictionary to a random page and choosing the first noun you see, for example, “bird.”
Think of four words that relate to the random word “bird.” For example, wings, tweets, flies, and nest.
Develop ideas for “new ways to promote your consulting services” for each of the four connection words - wings, tweets, flies, and nest.

The new ideas do not relate to the random word “bird”, but to the problem of “new ways to promote your consulting services.” You only used “bird” to create the four random connection words.

For the connection word “tweets,” you would come up with ideas, such as “leverage social media” or “generate word-of-mouth through viral videos.”

For “nest,” you could come up with ideas such as creating a community to provide additional value to customers or developing a smartphone application to notify potential clients of important news or information.

You would then develop new ideas for the other connection words “wings” and “flies”. The objective of using Random Word is to use a word as far outside the topic as possible. For example, you want to create a new form of transportation. The random word “cupcake” will allow you to generate new and interesting ideas.

Most people would never choose the word “cupcake” to develop ideas around transportation. Connecting unrelated words to spur creativity is the power of this simple technique.

The unusual associations between unrelated terms or concepts bring together two remote words by finding a link between them. It will surprise you how many new ideas you can develop in a few minutes from a completely unrelated word.

Do not worry about evaluating each idea; strive for quantity over quality. You will evaluate the new ideas later and converge on the best ideas to examine in detail. Random word is a simple, easy-to-learn technique that is great for generating new ideas and moving past mental blocks.

Random word forces you to think outside of normal patterns and to proactively look at unrelated words to drive new ideas. The third ideation method is a hybrid of inside-the-box and outside-the-box.

Hybrid

The pneumonic SCAMPER is another easy-to-learn and easy-to-use tool which allows you to develop new ideas within both the “closed world” and “open world” of the problem. SCAMPER helps you develop novel ways to reimagine a product or process rather than recycling the same old “ingredients”. SCAMPER allows you to rearrange existing variables into new combinations, both within the box (or closed world of the product) or outside the box.

The SCAMPER mnemonic stands for:

Substitute
Combine
Adapt
Modify
Put to another use
Eliminate
Reverse

SCAMPER allows you to think creatively using multiple perspectives to solve problems. It is an effective tool to examine your problem, either as a whole or for each specific element. For example, you can conduct a SCAMPER exercise on an entire motorcycle or on the individual suspension, brakes, chassis, or engine components. Expand each element of SCAMPER with questions.

For Substitute ask questions such as: can a different material be used? What can be replaced? and can we make this cheaper using …?
Several questions to ask for Combine are: what can we add? Where can we add something? and what if we added …. ?
For Adapt you can ask: what is this similar to? and what other process can be adapted?
Questions for Modify are: can we make it bigger? Can we make it smaller? and can we make it lighter?
For Put to another use you can ask: where else can this be used? and can this perform a different process or job?
Some questions for Eliminate are: what can we remove? How about one instead of two? and how can we simplify this?
And for Reverse ask questions such as: how else can this be arranged? What if we change the order? Should this be done sooner? and should this be done last?

The following example uses SCAMPER to create new ideas for a bicycle. This example has substituted the pedals with an engine, combined the bicycle with a generator to charge electronics, adapted the bicycle to clean dishes as you pedal - no electricity needed, and modified the frame using bamboo instead of steel. Other changes were to put the bicycle to another use to power water pumps in African villages, one fork leg was eliminated to reduce weight, and the driven sprocket position was reversed – it was installed on the front wheel instead of the rear wheel.

SCAMPER is a great way to develop many new ideas quickly. Practice and get comfortable using SCAMPER, then share with others to drive creativity. SCAMPER is very intuitive and is a great tool to develop new ideas individually or in a group.

After creating a large quantity of new ideas, the challenge is to narrow the list to what is feasible, desirable, and viable (three great areas of focus within HCD). Many design-thinking methods gloss over this very important part of the problem-solving process. Most teams do not have the time or resources to analyze every idea developed; which is why it is important to narrow the list of ideas to those which have the highest probability of solving the problem.

Analysis and Decision Making

Dot Voting

An easy way to narrow the list of ideas is through dot voting. Dot voting (multi-voting, sticker voting) is an easy method for choosing the option with the highest probabilities of achieving your goals. Write all the ideas on a flipchart or whiteboard. Give each team member three stickers (dots). Have each person place a dot next to their favored option(s). They can place all three dots on one idea or one on three different ideas; they can decide how they want to use the dots to vote.

When everyone is done, count the dots. The ideas with the most dots are the ones you need to investigate further. Ensure the best ideas win, not just the popular or easiest to implement — only the strong should survive. Review the entire list one more time to determine if any of the “orphan” ideas (those that were not chosen or had few votes) might still be useful. After voting, discuss the ideas and then conduct a Six Thinking Hats exercise for each idea.

Six Thinking Hats

Another way to supercharge design thinking is using a systematic and formal method to evaluate each idea. Too often teams revert to brainstorming to analyze the ideas, resulting in wasted time and effort. A much better method to analyze the chosen ideas is with the Six Thinking Hats (Hats). The Hats are part of Parallel Thinking, also developed by Dr. Edward de Bono.

Parallel thinking separates the different thinking modes used during decision-making (e.g., support, opposition, concerns, information, emotions) to ensure participants work together (in parallel) to achieve the optimal solution. Unlike traditional Western-style thinking (which favors the adversarial approach to making decisions and resolving issues), parallel thinking avoids arguments and conflict, focusing on the optimal solution — not the solution someone is trying to convince you to accept.

In typical Western-style debate and decision-making, everyone talks over one another, participants jump from one point to another, and often the most opinionated or loudest person — or the one with the most impressive title — wins. It is not always the optimal decision that is made, but someone’s preferred idea, resulting in a lower probability the chosen idea will solve the problem. The Hats allow for well thought-out decisions that focus on the problem rather than ego, emotions, or misguided opinions. Also, the Hats ensure you develop the best ideas within an objective process.

The Hats are colored symbolic “thinking hats” that identify a specific thinking mode. The thinking mode of each “hat” ensures a holistic analysis of a topic. The Hats guide individuals and teams to focus on one thinking mode at a time (your brain does not like multitasking). Similar to golf clubs, each hat is used for a specific purpose.

For example, a driver is not designed for putting (there is a specific club for that job: the putter). Use each hat for one specific thinking mode, and use one hat at a time; do not jump from one hat to another in a random, unstructured order. The power of the Hats is the focus on one thinking mode before moving to the next.

By mentally wearing and switching “hats,” it is easy to focus or redirect thoughts, the conversation, or the meeting. The Hats force an individual or group to look at all perspectives of the idea: weaknesses, concerns, benefits, problems, evidence, and emotions. Also, the Hats ensure a thorough review of a each idea in a minimal amount of time. Use the Hats in sequence, focused on a single idea during a set timeframe.

For example, a cross-functional team only discusses the white hat (data and information) and then moves to the red hat (emotions and feelings). The group does not jump back and forth between different hats. The group stays on one hat, completes the discussion on that specific thinking mode (e.g., data, concerns, benefits), and then moves on, leveraging focus and discipline in a limited amount of time per hat.

The strength of the Hats is that they force team members to analyze each idea holistically. Everyone is encouraged to use each hat and participate in the discussion. Those who are against the idea must come up with positive aspects (yellow hat), while those who love the idea must identify possible problems or concerns (black hat).

Analyzing each idea individually ensures resources are used effectively when developing prototypes. A key deliverable of the Create phase within HCD (and within most design thinking methodologies) is developing prototypes to gain feedback from potential users, to validate if the idea(s) will solve the problem. Narrowing the list of ideas to those with the highest probability of solving the problem (convergent thinking), is the most effective use of resources to quickly test prototypes.

Conclusion

Design thinking is a great method to get your teams out of the office and engage first-hand with customers. I feel there is nothing as important as gaining empathy through qualitative research and direct “contact” with customers. Unfortunately, design thinking’s reliance on brainstorming and a lack of formal idea evaluation hinders it from becoming as powerful as it could be. Systematic ideation and systematic evaluation can supercharge design thinking.

HCD is based on three phases; Hear, Create, and Deliver. By supercharging the Create phase of design thinking, problem-solving teams can deliver improved solutions beyond those top-of-mind ideas developed from only brainstorming. Systematic ideation and systematic analysis and decision-making are simple ways to supercharge an already excellent problem-solving methodology.

Using tools from Oxford Creativity’s TRIZ methodology, Systematic Inventive Thinking, Lateral Thinking, and the Six Thinking Hats, you can ensure your chosen ideas will provide the highest probability of success (the ability to solve the problem). Learn these simple tools, practice by yourself, then share with your teams. Focus on some easy wins to get team buy-in. Change is hard and most people push-back against something new. Don’t get frustrated. Be patient, provide examples of how these techniques can solve your problems, and you will recruit a legion of powerful problem solvers.