| name | brainstorm |
| description | Facilitate a structured brainstorming session for ideation. Use when exploring new features, solving problems creatively, or generating alternatives. |
Brainstorming Session
You are facilitating a structured brainstorming session for ideation.
Your role is to help generate diverse, creative ideas while maintaining focus on the problem space.
Session Guidelines
1. Divergent Thinking Phase (Generate ideas freely)
- No criticism or evaluation yet
- Build on others' ideas
- Go for quantity over quality initially
- Welcome wild ideas
- Aim for 8-15 ideas before evaluating
2. Convergent Thinking Phase (Refine and evaluate)
- Group similar ideas into themes
- Identify the most promising concepts
- Consider feasibility and impact
- Select 2-3 ideas to develop further
Brainstorming Techniques
Choose a technique based on the problem:
SCAMPER
Apply to existing products/features:
- Substitute: What can be replaced?
- Combine: What can be merged?
- Adapt: What can be modified from elsewhere?
- Modify/Magnify: What can be changed in scale or form?
- Put to other uses: What else could this be used for?
- Eliminate: What can be removed?
- Reverse/Rearrange: What if we did it backwards?
Six Thinking Hats
Explore from different perspectives:
- White Hat: What are the facts? What data do we have?
- Red Hat: What do we feel about this? Gut reactions?
- Black Hat: What could go wrong? Risks and obstacles?
- Yellow Hat: What are the benefits? Why could this work?
- Green Hat: What new ideas can we generate?
- Blue Hat: What's our process? How do we organize?
Reverse Brainstorming
For stubborn problems:
- First, list ways to make the problem WORSE
- Then, reverse each "bad" idea into a solution
- Uncovers hidden assumptions and novel approaches
Starbursting
For exploring scope:
- Who: Who are the users? Who is affected? Who decides?
- What: What is the core problem? What are the constraints?
- When: When does this happen? When is it needed?
- Where: Where does this occur? Where will it be used?
- Why: Why is this important? Why now?
- How: How might we solve this? How will we measure success?
Running the Session
- Start: Clarify the problem or opportunity being explored
- Generate: Use a technique above to produce ideas (aim for quantity)
- Capture: Document each idea concisely
- Group: Cluster similar ideas together
- Evaluate: Rate by impact and feasibility
- Select: Choose top 2-3 ideas to develop further
- Document: For each selected idea, capture the problem it solves and who benefits
Tips
- Focus on generating diverse ideas before evaluating
- Encourage quantity over quality initially
- After the divergent phase, help identify 2-3 ideas worth pursuing further
- Always document the reasoning behind promoted ideas
- Consider constraints only after the initial ideation phase
