Brainstorming

What is brainstorming?

Brainstorming is a method for generating solutions to new and challenging problems, such as those faced in design. Brainstorming is carried out by a team of individuals from many different spheres of life. Participants in brainstorming can meet once or more to discuss the problem and come up with solutions to it.

During brainstorming, members of the team are encouraged to be open-minded, and to bring up any ideas that occur to them. When a solution is proposed by one member of the team, it could trigger new ideas in the minds of other participants. Participants are encouraged to come up with new ideas, or to propose amendments or improvements to existing ones.

Composition of the brainstorming team

The brainstorming team should not be confined to experts in the area of the problem, but should also include people from other domains. It is well known that experts who spend most of their life dealing with the same set of problems may get used to thinking about it in the same way, and are restricted by their practice to certain solutions. However, outsiders can see the problem from a different perspective and can usually think of unprecedented ways of solving it.

The number of participants in a brainstorming team should be five to fifteen. If the number of participants is too small, there may not be enough stimulus for people to come up with widely different solutions. On the other hand, if the number of participants is too large, it will be difficult to organise the flow of ideas and some people may feel isolated and withdraw.

Participants are encouraged to feel free from any mental restrictions or inhibitions and are prompted to utter any idea that comes to their mind. Some spontaneous ideas may seem rather trivial, immature, or impractical at first, but when these ideas are further refined by other team members, they may become one of the most novel and revolutionary solutions to the problem.

Leadership of the brainstorming team

Every brainstorming team should have a leader responsible for organising the sessions. However, the team should not be hierarchically structured and anyone should be allowed to speak at any point in time, so the role of the ‘leader’ is more a facilitation role.

The brainstorming team facilitator should outline the problem before the brainstorming session. The facilitator should make sure that the rules are observed and the atmosphere remains free and easy during the session, and should encourage the flow of new ideas whenever the productivity of the team slackens. However, the brainstorming team facilitator should never lead in the expression of ideas and should only take the initiative when dealing with organisational issues. The facilitator should also make sure that no one criticises the ideas of other participants.

Brainstorming procedure

After outlining the problem, participants are urged to utter any idea for a solution to the problem that may cross their mind. It does not matter at this stage if the idea is mature enough or not, practical or impractical, implementable or otherwise. The main advantage of brainstorming is that an idea presented by one person can trigger another idea in the mind of a second person, which in turn can trigger another idea in the mind of a third person and so on. A person can either present a completely new idea or refine the idea presented by someone else. Gradually, some of the good ideas get refined and start to become more practical and implementable.

Participants should get rid of their intellectual inhibitions, and avoid rejecting ideas expressed by themselves or by other team members as ridiculous, impracticable or redundant. No one is allowed to criticise other people’s ideas, and people must avoid using discouraging language such as: “We have heard this before”, “this cannot be done”, “it will not work” or “this solution has nothing to do with the problem”.

New ideas can be adopted by other participants, who may change and develop them at will. It is also useful to combine several ideas into new proposals.

It is very important that all ideas should be documented. The practicability of the suggestions should be ignored at this stage of the process.

Brainstorming session duration

The brainstorming session should not last for more than 30 to 45 minutes.

Evaluation of the brainstorming session results

The results of brainstorming should be evaluated by experts in the field, who should evaluate and filter down to a few solutions.

Then, the final solutions should be reviewed with the entire team to avoid possible misunderstandings or one-sided interpretations on the part of the experts. New and more advanced ideas may well be expressed or developed during such a review session.