Ideas Workshop: brainstorming

The ideas workshops kicked off last night, with an excellent session on improving brainstorm by utilizing visualization. For each idea we came up with, we had to draw a quick sketch to represent it.

To generate ideas we took an every-day item and tried three different approaches:

• brainstorming alternate uses
• designing improvements
• building swiss-army knife adaptations

Take-aways from the workshop:

• Usability tip #2: You don’t need to be a great artist to sketch an idea. Simple scribbles can convey a lot more than just a word.
• Side benefits #2: Sketching ideas spurred my imagination and made the idea much easier to communicate.
• Side benefits #3: Turning brainstorming into a visual activity got everyone laughing about the silly drawings, which fueled even crazier ideas and sketches. Having fun makes brainstorming more productive.