“Group ideation just doesn’t work.”

That’s a common complaint I hear from digital-product teams — no matter how hard they try, they can’t get useful, effective UX ideas from collaboration. Often, in cases like these, design direction ends up being handed down from executives, or the designers resort to isolated, solo work.

Don’t get me wrong: individual ideation is extremely valuable. But when 100% of your ideation is being done alone, your team misses out on big opportunities.

In our survey of UX professionals on their ideation habits, we found that 66% of UX professionals feel that working in groups is better for producing high-quality design ideas. In particular, the inclusion of a variety of job roles in the UX ideation process results in useful, diverse ideas, and in buy-in from teammates.

Group ideation gets a bad reputation — not for any inherent faults it has as a creative approach, but because it so often goes wrong. It’s messy, challenging, and sometimes emotional, but repairing your group ideation problems is worth the effort.

Common Pitfalls of Group Ideation

Think back to times when you’ve jumped into a conference room with colleagues, and you will probably relate to these group-dynamics problems. These are some of the issues most likely to get in the way of useful, effective ideas.

Groupthink

Four people assert the same idea
At the beginning of an ideation session, Alex suggests that adding a chat feature to the mobile app would help answer users’ questions about the product. The group agrees and begins discussing different possible implementations of a chat feature. By the end of the session, the group has five slightly different versions of the same idea.

It’s human nature for us to tend to fixate on the first idea suggested (the Law of Primacy in Persuasion). But that won’t help us achieve the primary goal of ideation — to generate a wide diversity of ideas that could act as a solution to the design problem.

Fix it

  • Avoid choosing the first idea that comes along. If your team has chronic groupthink issues, consider making an explicit rule that the first several ideas will be set aside temporarily at the beginning of the session.

Unequal Contributions from Group Members

One person keeps her thoughts to herself, which the rest share their ideas with the group.
TJ, Alex, and Leanne are talkative, and have lots of ideas to share with the group. By the end of the session, Alex notices that Tara hasn’t contributed any ideas.

As Robert Frost said, “Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.” When a group of different people are in a room together, some will naturally contribute more, and some will naturally contribute less.

This phenomenon can be due to a variety of factors: experience, seniority, personality, or extroversion. Unequal contributions are always unfortunate, however, because the group misses out on ideas from the quiet teammates.

Fix it

  • Focus on quantity over quality. Clarify with your team that you’re looking for a lot of diverse ideas. Teammates shouldn’t be criticized or judged for proposing ideas that won’t work — those can be eliminated later when you move on to evaluation. This attitude can help decrease the pressure and anxiety that can inhibit the sharing of ideas.
  • Start with a warm up.  Especially if you’re getting a multidisciplinary team together, people may need some time to transition into this kind of creative thinking. Start the session with a short ideation game to help them relax and start working together.

Hierarchy Intimidation

One high-ranking person contributes an idea, and the rest of the group agrees.
TJ is the highest-ranking member of the group. He suggests adding a link to the FAQ to the primary-navigation bar. Everyone agrees.

Hierarchy intimidation is related to groupthink and unequal contribution. It can manifest when one high-ranking member of the group proposes an idea, and all the teammates agree and begin to focus on that idea, rather than contributing alternate solutions. It can also happen when new or inexperienced group members are too intimidated to contribute their ideas, or the teammates feel they’ll be judged based on the quality of their ideas.

Fix it

  • Consider not inviting superiors. If it’s an option, it may be best not to involve high-ranking colleagues at this stage.
  • Hold a presession session. If revoking invitations isn’t an option, consider holding a separate small ideation session in preparation for a large, formal session that includes executives. The presession can give shy teammates an opportunity to share their ideas in a safe space; these ideas can then be brought up in the larger meeting later.

Distractions

One teammate talks on the phone while the rest discuss ideas.
Leanne is trying to explain a complicated idea to the group, but she gets interrupted by an urgent call from a colleague. By the time she returns, the group has moved on to another topic.

With looming deadlines, email notifications, and text messages competing for attention, it can be hard to keep everyone in the session focused on ideation. Even when teammates manage to stay on task, their engagement in the session can be diminished by the stress of other priorities waiting at their desk. And then it’s still easy for the group to become distracted by irrelevant discussions that don’t address the task at hand.

Fix it

  • Set aside time for group ideation at the planning phase of the project. Planning for group-ideation time right from the beginning can ensure that it gets done and that the team can consider options before jumping into implementation. It also makes it more likely that teammates will be less stressed or distracted during the sessions, because this time is built into the schedule.
  • Use a ‘parking lot’. Choose a section of the wall to act as a parking lot. Any ideas or questions that come up during the session that aren’t directly on task for the goals of the session get written on a sticky note and placed there. That way, the contribution is acknowledged and documented, but it doesn’t derail the group.

More Ways to Fix Group-Ideation Problems

If your team is plagued by many group-ideation problems, don’t despair. It takes practice, but you can solve these or work around them. In addition to the recommendations above, here are some of our most helpful tips that can solve a variety of group-dynamics issues.

  • Admission is the first step to recovery. Watch for these issues in your group dynamics, identify them, and name them. Then you can move forward to decide how to overcome them.
  • Use a facilitator.  Have a dedicated member of the team who can monitor the communication and focus of the group, run the parking lot, keep an eye on timing, and help guide the emotions and energy of the team. This is a big job, so it helps if your facilitator is experienced and trained.
  • Experiment with structured techniques. Adding structure and rules to your session can make your ideation process effective. In particular, parallel design can help you reap the benefits of both individual and group ideation. One way to implement it in an ideation session is to have team members start working on ideas solo for a short amount of time (10 minutes, an hour, or more depending on the size of the design problem), and then regroup to share and synthesize ideas.

For more help diagnosing and solving ideation problems, as well as applied practice of many structured techniques to improve your solo or group ideation, check out our full-day course on Effective Ideation Techniques for UX Design.

If you want to learn the necessary skills to facilitate a group-ideation session, we also offer a course on Facilitating UX Workshops.