In any content area, one difference between a beginner and an expert is the latter's ability to come up with different examples that belong to the same category. This activity strengthens your ability to come up with examples of communication concepts.
Part of the reason we end up with under-developed ideas is that we stick with the first good idea we have — rather than taking the time to explore complementary approaches. 6-8-5 is designed to combat this pattern by forcing us to generate lots of ideas in a short period of time. The activity can then be repeated to hone & flesh out a few of the best ideas.
You can use the Draw Toast exercise to introduce people to the concepts of visual thinking, working memory, mental models and/or systems thinking.
This also works as a nice warm-up exercise to get people engaged with each other and thinking visually. Plus, it’s fun!
A questioning method for generating, explaining, investigating ideas.
This format for brainstorming compresses the essentials of an ideation session into one short format. The numbers 3-12-3 refer to the amount of time in minutes given to each of three activities: 3 minutes for generating a pool of observations, 12 for combining those observations into rough concepts, and 3 again for presenting the concepts back to a group.
Use a remote-friendly version of the classic note and vote exercise to generate ideas quickly, vote on the most suitable, and turn them into how might we statements your group can move forward with!
Explore any complex topic with Hopes, Worries, Risks, Chances seen by your participants. This creates connection, better acceptance for different angles and aspects of the topic and reduces the uncertainty of the group.
Name all the bad ideas to make room for good ones. Coming up with the perfect solution right off the bat can feel paralyzing. So instead of trying to find the right answer, get unstuck by listing all the wrong ones.
In Options Place, participants propose and lead their own breakout sessions instead of following a preset agenda. This unleashes people’s creativity and invites them to attend sessions that match their interests. When given the freedom to shape the agenda, participants become more engaged and take greater ownership of solutions, which leads to greater commitment, action, innovation, and follow-through. In this way, Options Place brings to life LS Principle #6, Amplify Freedom and Responsibility. This structure works well for large groups.
A simple exercise that complements exploratory, discursive, and creative workshops with insights and opinions from outside. Use this exercise when brainstorming ideas, developing a new product or service or creating a strategy or plan that will include others. Participants phone a co-worker and ask them questions relevant to the task. This quickly generates meaningful input from a range of “outside” perspectives. Often, participants will be surprised at how simple it was to solicit this input and how valuable it is to the process.
This is an exercise to inspire your team with products or services that they think they can use as inspiration for their concepts in the next phases of their design sprints.
A fast and loud method to enhance brainstorming within a team. Since this activity has more than round ideas that are repetitive can be ruled out leaving more creative and innovative answers to the challenge.
