This Is Service Design Methods

Chapter 2. Ideation Methods

Connecting research to prototyping

1. Pre-ideation Slicing the elephant and splitting the ideation challenge

2. Pre-ideation Ideas from future-state journey mapping

3. Extra Journey ideation with dramatic arcs

4. Pre-ideation Ideas from future-state system mapping

5. “How might we …?” trigger questions from insights and user stories

6. Generating many ideas Brainstorming

7. Brainwriting

8. 10 plus 10

9. Adding depth and diversity Bodystorming

10. Using cards and checklists

11. Ideation based on analogies and association

12. Understanding, clustering, and ranking options Octopus clustering

13. Benny Hill sorting (“Thirty-Five”)

14. Idea portfolio

15. Decision matrix

16. Reducing options Quick voting methods

17. Physical commitment

There is a whole industry around idea generation and selection. In service design, we see ideas pragmatically – as the connector between insights (from research in the real world) and the evolution of ideas which comes through real-world prototyping. Use ideation methods lightly to move quickly between these more important activities, never to replace them.

Countless methods exist, often under multiple names, to create, filter, and select ideas. Here, we introduce some favorites, presented as detailed step-by-step instructions and structured into categories:

• Pre-ideation: Slicing the elephant and splitting the ideation challenge, ideas from journey mapping, ideas from system mapping, ...