Finishing a Brainstorm (#2 Amplify)

This post is the second in a series on Finishing a Brainstorm, focusing on Amplify. The two other posts are Clarify (#1) and Verify (#3).

Also, this topic is parallel to a dreaded brainstorm affliction called Creative Churn.

The second area to focus when finishing a brainstorm is Amplify – that is, improve your average, mediocre and marginal ideas by merging ideas together, adapting or editing them, or force-fitting elements together to create a unique third idea.

Here’s the three steps to amplify when finishing a brainstorm:

Clean-up the flipchart pages

Ask the group to help bring order to the flipchart pages.
Quickly review and fill in any words left out when writing the ideas down on flipcharts.
Remove unneeded flipchart pages.
Go through all pages and circle/highlight the 3-5 words which encapsulate the concept behind the core ideas, good or bad. I prefer to use an entirely separate colour or a bright highlighter to visually separate the core ideas from the messy notes

Analyse all ideas, looking for …

Any repeating ideas. Link these ideas using your pen or highlighter.
Ways to combine or connect unrelated ideas to form more complete or whole ideas.
Ideas which need to be brainstormed further, researched or tested.
Any Big Ideas, or provocative ideas which warrant more attention.

Select the best ideas

Distribute the creative criteria to the brainstorm participants.
Give everyone a few – purchased from an office supply store – and ask them to judiciously select only those ideas which fit the criteria. People should have 3-4 dots in a small brainstorms, or 5-6 for large ones.
Once finished, look in order at the ideas with the most dots for further discussion.

Impact-Effort Matrix

As you’re finishing the brainstorm to amplify your ideas further, you may also want to consider create an Impact-Effort Matrix.

It’s a simple chart (right, from Nielsen Norman Group) for you to consider both how much impact you’ll get from your ideas vs. how much effort will go into implementing the ideas.

Here’s a terrific article which outlines how to create one, plus other methods to amplify, prioritise and organise your ideas when finishing your brainstorm.

Go here: 5 Prioritization Methods in UX Roadmapping.

One last point. As you’re finishing the brainstorm, to amplify your ideas may also mean you need to walk away from the ideas for 30 minutes or so. Obviously if time is of the essence, this doesn’t work. But more often than not, I find it’s good to thoroughly clean-up the ideas and notes … then go do something else and let my subconscious think a bit more.

Any other thoughts to add on verifying and improving your ideas as you finish the brainstorms? Please add your comments below.