To ideate is to contextualise

Ideas reflect their ideators and contexts. All we have to begin with when we design products and services are contexts; notions of what might work and what might not. Until we actually contextualise our ideas, we can never know for sure how successsful they will be. To ideate, then, is to contextualise; to use our knowledge, experience and intuition to generate, develop and communicate ideas in their surroundings.

Ideas foundation

Where ideas are weak you may need a stronger ideation structure. So establish a robust foundation of ideation tools for you to build upon.

Ideator's edge

Ideators know their stuff. They have fully invested in deepening their knowledge and improving their ideation skills, and it really shows. Never to become complacent, though, you will need to continue on your knowledge-seeking adventure in order to keep that ideation edge!

Telling ideas

Frame your idea using ideation tools. Then story-board or animate your idea and tell it in the spirit of story telling.

Co-ideation

Although ideation is a way of creative thinking and expression that tends to focus on individual rather than communal activity, it can be beneficial for students to co-ideate, or to experience what I call co-ideation. The reason for this is that when students help each other to ideate (typically in pairs or groups of 4 - 6 students), they go through an intellectual and emotional learning process that help clarify their own thinking and understanding of ideation. Similarly, and as designers typically design for others, co-ideation with stakeholders (non-designers), may help designers find out what stakeholders think, what they value, and what would be useful to them.

Ideation and language

We don't need logic to generate smart ideas. But intuition doesn't diminish the significance of thought, and language is necessary to communicate our ideas to anyone else.

Computer-aided ideation (CAI)

Now that digital media, including CAD, are built into the front-end of design processes, computing has become intuitive enough to be part of ideation. Only lack of awareness and/or fear of new technologies, then, would present Computer-aided ideation, CAI, as a disruptive concept.

The Ideator's stone

The ideator's stone is an ideation tool capable of turning base ideas into optimal ones. The tool has the magic of words, the beauty of drawing, the malleability of clay, and the ingenuity of computing.

Tools and ideas

Idea sketching, as process, is part of design ideation rather than the idea itself. The idea sketch, as outcome, is evidence of the idea.

Ideation stratagem

Ideation can take the form of a stratagem - a plan or scheme that evolves and improves with accumulated knowledge and practice.

Find inspiration

'Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it where you find it'.
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan's new album Together Through Life is out April 27 on Columbia Records

Ideation tools

Design ideation suggests a relational process. To capture and communicate the ideation process, designers need tools, what I call conceptual, or ideation tools. Such tools include sketching, words (speech and language), modelling (physical and virtual), and computing. The aim of the ideation workshop is to help improve the use of conceptual tools (see also below).

Too many big ideas?

The world is full of people who think they know how to make the world a better place. Perhaps that's the problem. If there weren't so many smart Alecs with so many big ideas, we'd all get along a lot more easily. So what we need is not more big ideas but more thoughful ideas?

Ideas - so what?!

It's not enough to have an idea. It's what you do with your idea that matters. You need to see things through. So get your ideas out of your head: Articulate them! Argue them! Communicate them, and convince others your ideas are worth implementing!