The Ideation Paradox: Why More Brainstorming Doesn’t Always Produce Better Ideas

A few years ago, I stood in front of a room of UX designers and leaders, presenting on the importance of brainstorming ideas. It landed well. Or at least I thought it had.

A week later, one of the leaders listening gave their own presentation.

The title?

“Occam’s Razor: Why the obvious idea is most likely the correct one.”

Coincidence? Maybe.

But in hindsight, I get it.

In UX, pushing for the most creative idea when patterns and standards already exist can be expensive, and sometimes worse for the user. Jakob Nielsen’s “consistency and standards” heuristic says exactly this. Users expect familiar patterns. They expect things to work the way they’ve seen elsewhere.

Here’s the ideation dilemma when it comes to finding the right UX solution

The obvious idea often exists for a reason. But in practice, design problems rarely have a single correct answer.

There are a few reasons for this:

• First, technology, business constraints and user needs frequently pull in different directions. The obvious solution for the user might not align with what is technically feasible or commercially viable.
• Second, there may not be an existing pattern that fits the situation.
• And third, if we never explore ideas beyond the approaches we already know, we risk missing opportunities to improve upon existing patterns.

That’s why ideation still matters.

However, ideation in design can’t just be for the sake of creativity or originality. As designers it needs to be done with the intent of finding the best possible solution for the user within the business constraints.

So, when the obvious idea doesn’t quite solve the problem, what do you do?

You brainstorm.

You’ve probably been told since early in your career to throw away your first idea. But when you sit down with a blank sheet of paper, you may find your second, third, fifth, and tenth ideas getting progressively worse.

This creates what I think of as “The Ideation Paradox.” The longer we brainstorm, the more original our ideas become, but the harder it becomes to produce ideas that are immediately practical.

Research supports this. Reinig and Briggs (2008) found that during a single continuous brainstorming session, the proportion of high-quality ideas tends to decline as the session continues. However, Lucas and Nordgren (2015) found that spending more time brainstorming is associated with generating more original ideas.

This isn’t particularly surprising when you think about it. When you first start brainstorming, your ideas are sensible. They’re often the obvious ones – thanks, Occam’s Razor. As you push further, and you’re forced to stretch your thinking your ideas get stranger because you’re having to make less straightforward connections.

So we end up with a paradox:

Early ideas = More likely to be practical, less likely to be original
Later ideas = More likely to be original, less likely to be practical

So how do we produce UX ideas that are both high quality and original through brainstorming?

This is where incubation comes in.

The first study looked at one continuous session of participants generating idea after idea. But that’s not how creativity usually works.

For a long time, researchers have suggested that ideas develop through stages (Young, 1965):

1. Generate the obvious ideas.
2. Push beyond them.
3. When you’ve exhausted your immediate thinking, step away and allow your brain to work in the background.

This third step is known as incubation. It’s the idea that stepping away and focusing on something else can help you see connections you wouldn’t find by staring at a blank page. This is often where we have the “aha” moment and a practical solution appears that wasn’t initially obvious.

Traditionally, incubation takes time. Sometimes it can happen over weeks, months, or even years.

So my advice is: when your product owner tells you to have some wireframes by the end of the week…

Tell them to come back next year.

Just kidding.

Here’s my actual advice for UX designers and other creatives.

The best way to accelerate the incubation process is to fuel your brain with inspiration.

Ideas are formed from the information, experiences, and observations we collect over time. To accelerate incubation, we need to fill our minds with things that create opportunities for new connections.

As UX designers (and other creatives), this can be done through:

• Seek out inspiration: This can mean researching competitors or looking into completely different industries. Anything that sparks a new connection you may not have otherwise considered.
• Bring in another person: Fresh eyes can reveal perspectives you haven’t considered or connect ideas you would never have linked yourself.

Beyond fuelling your brain, there are a few practical things you can do:

• Go wide first, then go deep: Think laterally before expanding on any one idea. This prevents you from committing too early before proper exploration has happened. As UX designers, techniques like Crazy 8s can be a great way to stretch your thinking.
• Take a break: This comes back to incubation. Even if you don’t have weeks, once you’ve pushed through your first wave of ideas, step away. A walk around the block might be enough to create the mental distance needed to see the problem differently.

So when the obvious idea isn’t working and you need to push further, fuel your brain, step away, and let your ideas incubate.

 

References

Briggs, R. (2006). Measuring the Quality of Ideation Technology and Techniques. Proceedings of the 39th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

Lucas, B. and Nordgren, L. (2015). People underestimate the value of persistence for creative performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109(2), pp.232-243.

Young, J. (1965). A technique for producing ideas. 1st ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Professional.