Idea Generation

This exercise will encourage participants to draw ideas from previous exercises and be creative in coming up with solutions.

Introduction

After conducting an exercise to stimulate questions or inspiration, Product Managers will begin sketching their own ideas for how to solve a problem. They should think about elements or aspects of a solution to the problem and sketch them.

Required Materials

Pen and paper.

Workflow

1. Individually, Product Managers should spend about ten minutes drawing, doodling, and writing different ideas on an A4 sheet of paper. They should aim to fill the sheet of paper with doodles, sample headlines, diagrams, stick figures doing stuff - anything that gives form to their thoughts.

2. After each Product Manager has had the chance to sketch some ideas, the group should be brought back together to discuss what they drew.

3. Each participant should pass their sheet of ideas to the person on their left hand side.

4. Once everyone has someone else's work in front of them, the group should discuss what stands out to them from the sheet in front of them.

5. Participants can add dots, stars or circle pieces of work that stands out to them in particular.

6. After the discussion is over, the participants should pass back the sheets to their original owners.

Collaboration

When participants have another person's work in front of them they should feel more inclined to speak about someone else's ideas than their own. Trading sheets means that everyone has a new set of ideas in front of them which will help them to see the problem as viewed by someone else.

If the group has a hard time finding points to discuss, facilitators could suggest swapping a second time or bringing all the sheets of paper together in the centre of the table or on a whiteboard.