Brainstorming and Sketching
The team has its question: "How might we let subscribers change today's lunch without leaving cooks with extra food?" Within seconds, someone says "a Skip button on the morning screen", and heads nod. First ideas are rarely the best ones; they are just the most familiar. The job now is to get many ideas out, quickly and cheaply, before choosing any.
The rule
Go wide before you go deep; rough sketches beat polished guesses.
Ideation has two phases, and mixing them kills both:
- Diverge: produce as many options as possible. Quantity first, no judging, build on each other's ideas, stay on the HMW.
- Converge: compare the options against the problem statement and the success metric, and choose.
Two habits make diverging work:
- Think alone, then together. Five silent minutes where everyone writes their own ideas stops the first or loudest idea from anchoring the whole room. Then share.
- Map the space. A quick mind map, with the HMW in the centre and branches for subscriber, cook, rider, timing and money, shows you corners nobody has explored.
Sketching makes ideas concrete fast. Pen, paper, boxes and arrows; rough is the point. A sketch shows an idea's shape in a minute, and nobody is attached to a drawing that took a minute, so weak ideas die easily. A popular warm-up is eight frames in eight minutes: fold a sheet into eight panels and sketch a different idea or variation in each, one minute apiece.
To converge, let people vote silently with dots, then test each finalist: would this actually cut untouched boxes without leaving cooks with extra food?
The shortcut
Force range with angles. Generate at least one idea for each: change the time, change the person, change the money, remove the step. The obvious idea usually covers just one angle.
Change the time
A change window that stays open until 7:30 a.m., matching when cooks actually start.
Drills
Answer fast — trust the rule.
Why write ideas alone in silence before discussing them as a group?
During the diverge phase, a teammate says, "That will never work." Which rule does this break?
Why should early sketches be rough?
All eight sketches are variations on a Skip button. What is the best fix?
Remember
- Go wide before you go deep; rough sketches beat polished guesses.
- Shortcut: one idea per angle, changing the time, the person, the money, or removing the step.
- Trap: judging during the diverge phase, or letting the first idea anchor the room.