Reflection and ideas
As part of my MA in User Experience Design, I was introduced to different ideation and prototyping techniques.
This blog post was originally published in 2022 as part of a reflective journal I wrote.
Now that I’ve participated in my first rapid ideation, how do I feel about it?
I really enjoyed it! Yay!
It actually seemed very similar to creative brainstorming sessions I’ve done before. I guess the only difference was the use of stimuli, chosen at random and revealed during the session. Usually, I would go into a brainstorming session with at least a vague idea about what the overall theme or topic would be.
This approach was different and fun.
Distance ideation
Our rapid ideation took place online, using the university’s video conferencing tool (a bit like Zoom). I think this made it a little awkward, as slight delays in internet connection interrupted the flow and energy at times. However, it was still a very positive experience.
I really enjoyed hearing other people’s interpretations of the image on the card and their ideas. Each idea sparked new ideas, like firey embers.
Our ideas were captured during the webinar - it was recorded and the chat feature was availble to download as a txt file. However, I do wonder if it would have been more effective to have used a virtual whiteboard tool like miro or lucidspark that we could all contribute to during the session. Having said that, perhaps that approach would have been a little messy?
Initial ideas
I used miro to capture my initial ideas, based on my own interpretations of the card and ideas sparked from conversations with other students during the rapid ideation session.
I then added arrows to organise and link my ideas, borrowing the branching technique from mind mapping (Luenendonk 2015).
I’m feeling quite happy with all of the ideas here. However the one that’s capturing my attention the most is the crow tour guide one. I’ve changed the colours of the sticky notes relating to this idea in the image below. This is the idea I will develop further into a prototype.
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LUENENDONK, Martin. 2015. ‘Techniques for Idea Generation: Mind Maps’. Cleverism [online]. Available at: https://cleverism.com/techniques-idea-generation-mind-maps/ [accessed 4 Jan 2024].
Thank you for reading.
If you liked this, you might enjoy reading the case study for Under the Wing in my portfolio or exploring the blog posts below.
