This research explores a new methodology for idea-generation with multi-disciplinary design teams demonstrating alternative ideation techniques and brainstorming facilitation. Innovators may use this methodology to enhance their company’s enthusiasm toward a project, link and generate different ideas together, or train newcomers in a team-building exercise. Researchers can use this dynamic moderator approach that involves careful timing to conduct a compact brainstorming session. Design educators may challenge their teaching styles with various parts of this methodology to encourage their students to practice thinking more broadly and gathering out-of-the-box ideas into one narrative by using the compiled, tested techniques in this study.
Current idea-generation methods range from traditional methods such as focus groups, to non-traditional social networking platforms such as GUNGEN used in Japan. However, little to no information details an approach that leverages a combination of social networking channels such as wiki communities to co-create with design teams, while combining generative tools and free association for storytelling during the pre-design phase.
Six separate workshops were facilitated at the respective job sites of the participants. Each group was comprised of six to eight professionals screened and recruited through a contact person who also participated in the hour-long ideation workshop. A total of twenty-nine participants tested the methodology.
The results reveal novel associations with mundane objects, which add imagination and cohesion to these objects when formulated into storytelling. As a vehicle for collaborative ideation, this methodology is intended for group motivation and idea enhancement in a cost-effective way. It is aimed to benefit those who are thought leaders, and regularly work with ideas to innovate, manage, strategize, educate, moderate, research, and design, without the time or money to go on a creative retreat.
A qualitative research approach was applied to this exploration. Successive workshops followed an experiential-feedback strategy that built on top of modifications determined by the moderator’s experience from each previous workshop. Data was collected by video capture, audio documentation, and post-workshop questionnaires. More specifically, the methodology began with an immersion phase where online subject matter experts from wiki communities interacted with the design team. This was followed by a one-hour workshop consisting of four parts: part one was a group discussion on wikis; part two was an individual activity practicing free association; part three was a simulation of field research; and part four consisted of the group brainstorming activity and storytelling.
In the end, the findings revealed distinctive patterns between company culture and the range of ideas generated by the design teams more familiar with the participatory methods of ideation. The following discussion describes how this methodology may be applied to various stages of the design process as a co-creation method and a powerful aid to design problem solving.