What is the ideation process?

Ideation is the process of generating, developing, and prioritizing ideas—typically to solve a problem you’ve already defined. In design thinking, it’s the third phase: after empathizing with users through research and defining their core problems (often with a UX problem statement), your team challenges assumptions and generates a wide range of possible solutions before prototyping the strongest ones.

The goal isn’t to land on the perfect idea immediately. It’s to produce enough ideas—good and bad—that an innovative solution to your users’ problems can surface.

Keep reading for more on ideation, its role in design and marketing, and ways to run more productive sessions.

Defining ideation and its purpose

The Oxford dictionary defines ideation as the formation of ideas or concepts. An ideation session, therefore, refers to creating and sharing new ideas (concrete, abstract, or visual) throughout the entire thought cycle: innovation, development, and actualization.

These ideas don’t have to be completely new. The purpose is to generate as many ideas as possible—new and old—to reveal either a completely new idea or a current one that can be implemented in a new way.

What is the concept of ideation?

The concept of ideation is to generate as many ideas as possible—good and bad—in the session, only then narrowing the list down to top favorites. This ensures you’ve exhausted your creative resources before committing to the next innovation you’ll introduce to your users.

What is an example of ideation?

One of the most common examples of ideation is brainstorming, a process where participants voice ideas as they come to mind. The key to ideation and brainstorming is keeping the environment open-minded and free of criticism, so participants can comfortably develop new ideas—no matter how off-the-wall they may initially seem.

Why do we need ideation in design thinking?

The key to filling market gaps and resolving user needs is innovation, and innovation depends on a steady flow of ideas. An ideation session gives your team an inspired environment to generate creative ideas and develop a final solution to the problems you discovered in the design thinking process.

There’s a reason it comes after researching user needs and analyzing data, and just before creating prototypes and testing. It builds on how well your team knows your users and their pain points. It’s also a crucial step in thinking outside the box, incorporating different perspectives, and expanding the thought process through free-thinking space—leading to the final concept your design team bases the next prototype on.

Simply put, it’s the foundation of everything leading up to your product launch.

What does ideation mean in marketing?

Since ideation prompts teams to generate ideas from nothing, it plays an equally important part in your company’s marketing. Just as product development and design require constant innovation, marketing techniques must also stay ahead of the competition to introduce new things in memorable ways.

Marketers consistently cite the ability to create a steady stream of ideas as central to their success—and ideation, used as a deliberate step in your marketing strategy, is how you build that stream.

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Tips for preparing for an ideation session

As you prepare for your ideation session, consider the environment your team will generate ideas in. It influences both the quantity and quality of ideas in the process.

Here are some tips to help support a successful ideation session.

Provide a collaborative work environment

Collaboration is one of the most important elements of ideation. Team members build on each other and create solutions they may not have thought of alone. By bringing together different skills, expertise, and perspectives, the session benefits from more innovative thinking and review.

Researchers report that “simply feeling like you’re part of a team of people working on a task makes people more motivated as they take on challenges.” Generating ideas from scratch to address issues identified in user needs research is complex and challenging—and motivation is critical to whether the end product solves the problem or falls short.

Foster freedom to share any idea

No idea should be considered unacceptable in your ideation session. The most off-the-wall idea influences the final concept more often than the most obvious one. After all, the point of the process is to think outside the box so your team can generate new ways to fulfill consumer needs.

That said, a mix of obvious and abstract ideas tends to produce the best outcome. Obvious ideas still contribute to the session’s success, while abstract ideas inspire the creative thinking that leads somewhere new.

Use technology to your advantage

You don’t have to abandon pen and paper in your ideation session. But technology can streamline ideas and foster more creativity, and experts recommend accelerating technologies for rapid ideation—even though other stages of design thinking usually get more technological focus.

In an in-depth field study comparing technology with traditional methods, researchers noted that participants using technology to ideate created functional solutions quicker than their counterparts. 3D printing made the difference in that case, but it isn’t necessary for every session. In most cases, digital devices, tools, and software are a great way to accelerate creativity and innovation.

Similarly, when ideating on a technology product, invite the developers building the solution. They have insider knowledge of what existing technologies could be used and the state of your current tech stack.

There may be some bias in giving the people who have to build the solution a seat at the table, but it’s usually to everyone’s advantage. Putting them at the source of ideas can stop an idea that could never feasibly be built—or, just as often, a developer hears a purposefully outlandish solution and offers ways it could actually work.

Timing and inspiration

Successful ideas often come at the most curious times. The best ideas aren’t always introduced in the very first session—it takes time, and participants need room to let their minds wander. Rushing people can scare away the introverts on your team who add real value to the process.

Conversely, imposing a time limit or timed sketch sessions can foster adrenaline-induced inspiration. An exercise known as “Crazy 8s” offers exactly this and can be done during any ideation session.

Each person folds a paper into eight parts. A timer is set for eight minutes, and everyone sketches eight different ideas—or eight steps of a single flow, when applicable. The results are often surprisingly insightful, and silent voting can usher in a well-leveled deciding factor and group-based solutions.

What are the four themes of ideation?

According to Milene Goncalves and Philip Cash’s “The Life Cycle of Creative Ideas...” study, you can divide the creative process into four themes:

Theme 1: closed-loop ideation

In theme one, the researchers found that the earliest ideas may not be “the best,” but they’re highly influential to the final concept.

Theme 2: incremental middle

Theme two occurred during the ideation process, where participants started to be more deliberate about their creation and variation of ideas.

Theme 3: sacrificial reframing

Theme three emerged late in the session. At this point, “sacrificial concepts” were ideated—a necessary part of the process, as the craziest ideas thrown out in a session most often lead to the most valuable solutions.

Theme 4: combinatorial preference

Theme four revealed how much more influential intuitive ideas were for participants than ideas generated through deep deliberation. Even during the final stages of refinement and elaboration, participants’ final solutions connected back to their instinctive ideas.

What are the three stages of ideation?

Ideation isn’t as simple as just generating ideas. It’s common for companies to churn out ideas and never go further because they miss the next two stages.

The entire process starts in the first two phases of design thinking—research and evaluation—when pinpointing the consumer problem you want to resolve. As you uncover the problem, you move into the three stages of ideation:

Stage 1: idea generation

Idea generation is the stage you’re likely most familiar with: creating and sharing ideas. Here you’ll combine techniques and methods to help your team develop the best possible solutions. No ideas are bad ideas in this stage, and the more ideas generated, the more successful your session will be in the next stage.

Stage 2: selection

After generating as many ideas as possible, the team isn’t finished. You have to bring those ideas to life and refine them into ones you can make work. Select the best, continuously narrowing your top picks until a clear winner is ready for development. Then encourage the team to evaluate the strongest ideas and focus on using them to solve customer needs.

Stage 3: development

By the development stage, your team is refining the final ideas to perfection (or as close as you can get until you refine the solution again after testing). This includes moving into the fourth phase of design thinking: creating prototypes, evaluating the idea in action, and making any necessary improvements.

Ideation methods and approaches

Develop methods and approaches that work best for you and your team. These examples can help you get started.

Methods for the first stage of ideation: idea generation

To inspire your team to think more creatively when generating ideas, try these methods:

Sketching is often one of the first approaches to ideation: participants sketch out their ideas. The first sketch is typically basic, capturing the core concepts of the solution. As time goes on, the sketch is continuously refined until the final concept is revealed.

Even people not typically seen as “designers” should be encouraged to sketch. It’s much less a competition of artistic skill and much more about the idea itself—simple shapes and lines are all that’s necessary.

Brainstorming is another way to generate many ideas at once. Participants voice what comes to mind or jot down ideas on cards to share with each other. Most won’t be usable—the intention is to get the obvious ideas out of the way and create a collaborative environment that inspires more innovative thinking.

Brainwriting works like brainstorming, with team members coming up with as many ideas as possible. But this method relies on anonymity to help the most outside-the-box thinkers contribute ideas that fear of judgment might otherwise suppress. Everyone writes down as many ideas as possible, and the session’s leader reads them out.

Worst possible idea asks your team to purposely list the worst ideas for solving your users’ needs. First, team members spend a few minutes listing bad ideas (quantity over quality). Then everyone reviews them.

A second round of bad ideas follows, inspired by what participants heard from others. The final steps include grouping bad ideas to find common elements, listing “good” substitutions for the bad, and challenging each other to develop better solutions from the combinations.

Idea challenges use incentives to encourage maximum results. The session leader sets a time limit, asks for the best solutions, and awards the top answer (or answers) a prize. It’s most often used across a wider group in the company to encourage a more innovative culture.

Methods for the second stage of ideation: selection

When entering the selection stage of the ideation process, these approaches can help narrow down ideas:

The impact-effort matrix is a decision-making tool that prioritizes the best ideas by comparing their likely effort against their end impact. According to the American Society for Quality, the impact-effort matrix “provides answers to the question of which solutions seem easiest to achieve with the most effects.”

Gather all the suggested solutions and create a diagram of four quadrants: the horizontal axis is the effort required to implement the solution, and the vertical axis is the solution’s impact. Using colors, symbols, and labels, the team evaluates the diagram. The best solutions land in the top left-hand quadrant.

A stage-gate process has your team develop gates between each stage to reduce uncertainty and shape the best ideas. It’s organized into small, easier-to-manage stages like discovery, scoping, feasibility, development, validation, and launch.

As you move each idea through the roadmap, each gate presents resources, risks, and forecasts for the best courses of action. The process weeds out high-risk solutions while surfacing the most viable ideas.

Idea management tools help when there are many ideas to track—sessions commonly produce dozens. How you manage your ideas plays an important role in your session’s success, and a management tool keeps everyone focused on the top ideas as the weaker ones are weeded out through the previous methods.

Methods for the third stage of ideation: development

Finally, as you enter the development stage, methods like analogy thinking and storyboarding are most helpful:

Analogy thinking involves finding the commonality between two or more ideas to optimize the final concept. As you make your final selections, you’ll often find similarities in the top results from the selection stage—and a good chance those ideas are somehow connected.

Have your team apply analogy reasoning in the final step of ideation to combine two or more ideas into the best possible solution for your users. You may even find the ideas resemble what’s currently available, letting you expand on what exists to improve it.

Storyboarding is a technique for visualizing existing ideas so your team can identify connections between them. By drawing connections between a sequence of events and your team’s ideas, you can make more sense of the final concepts heading into development. As a result, you can refine and make final improvements before moving into the next stage: prototyping.