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.