Ideation is the mode of your design process in which you generate potential design solutions that satisfy the design requirements. You ideate in order to transition from identifying people's goals and interaction problems into exploring solutions for your users. You should explore a large number of ideas that cut across diverse solution space. Team members should push each other to go beyond obvious solutions and be imaginative and harness diverse perspectives. From this vast depository of ideas, you will build prototypes to test with users. While ideation requires creativity, David Kelley says it is not only for a chosen few in the video below.

[Source: https://www.ted.com/talks/david_kelley_how_to_build_your_creative_confidence?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare](https://www.ted.com/talks/david_kelley_how_to_build_your_creative_confidence?utm_source=tedcomshare&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=tedspread)

Source: https://www.ted.com/talks/david_kelley_how_to_build_your_creative_confidence?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

Brainstorming

Brainstorm is an activity where you set a single topic to discuss over a fixed period (timeboxing) in a small group. In the ideation step, we use brainstorming to come up with as many ideas of potential solutions that satisfy the design requirements. Participants of a brainstorming session use tools like post-It notes and whiteboard to capture ideas that emerge. The group size should not be too big, no more than eight people, and it'd be ideal if the members involve people from diverse backgrounds with different perspectives.

Come up with a Lot of Ideas

Team members should go for quantity and variety in coming up with ideas through brainstorming. Here are steps and tips for making discussions productive:

• Before the discussion, clarify the problem you want to solve and decide how long you will discuss.
• Stand up, gather around a whiteboard or a wall, and start a group discussion. Think how you could solve the problem that you specified. When you come up with a potential design solution, jot it down on a post-it note and put it on a wall or write it down on a white board.
• In discussion, build on ideas of the others to collaborate. You should include people with different backgrounds to invite diverse ideas.
• Use personas and scenarios to focus your energy in generating ideas to solve user's problems and assist them in achieving their goals.
• Do not let titles or ranks affect who can speak up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M66ZU2PCIcM

The video above introduce how people form IDEO carry out brainstorming. They mention some tips: "one conversation at a time", "stay focused on topic", "encourage wild ideas", "defer judgement", "build on ideas of others", "focused chaos", "enlighten trial and error succeeds over the planning of the lone genius", "time constraint", and "fail often in order to succeed sooner".

When you have hard time coming up with design ideas, Preece et al. suggest to start thinking about the following set of questions to orient your discussion (Preece et al., 2015, p.40). Answering the following questions transforms the requirements into more concrete ideas for building software systems.

• “Are there problems with an existing product or user experience? If so, what are they?”
• “Why do you think there are problems?”
• “How do you think your proposed design ideas might overcome these?”, **and
• “If you have not identified any problems and instead are designing for a new user experience, how do you think your proposed design ideas support, change, or extend current ways of doing things?”

Consolidate Ideas

At the end of the session, you should group post-it notes or writings on a whiteboard with similar ideas together. Record the consolidated ideas by taking a picture of all the post-it notes on the wall. While your memory is fresh, turn each of the grouped ideas into a formal writing or a sketch of the system's user interface.