Ideation Articles & Videos

  • How to Draw a Wireframe (Even if You Can’t Draw)

    Even people with limited drawing abilities can learn to sketch a wireframe if they learn a few common conventions used to represent various design elements.

  • User Feedback vs. Innovation

    Relying too much on feedback from customers risks hampering innovation, so what is the best balance for UX design?

  • Scenario Mapping: Design Ideation Using Personas

    Persona-based scenarios can be leveraged to influence design through guided brainstorming workshops called scenario-mapping workshops.

  • First Diverge, Then Converge During UX Workshops

    A general technique that's helpful in many kinds of UX workshops and design ideation is to first have team members work independently to create diverging ideas and solutions. Then, as a separate step, everybody works together to converge on the final outcome.

  • Using “How Might We” Questions to Ideate on the Right Problems

    Constructing how-might-we questions generates creative solutions while keeping teams focused on the right problems to solve.

  • Design Ruts and Functional Fixedness

    A common problem during user experience ideation is when design teams are stuck on a traditional way of thinking about aspects of the design. Here are some tips for breaking out of such functional fixedness.

  • 4 Ways to Share Sketches in Remote Ideation

    Depending on how much your team can spend, your team might want to use tablets, document cameras, smartphones, or your computers’ webcams to share sketches.

  • Remote UX Work: Guidelines and Resources

    Even though in-person UX sessions are typically ideal, sometimes budget or travel restrictions necessitate remote UX work. This article presents guidelines for remote user research, UX workshops or presentations, and collaboration.

  • How to Get Stakeholders to Sketch: A Magic Formula

    Collaborative sketching is a powerful tool for building buy-in for design decisions; however, it can be difficult to get stakeholders comfortable with the idea of drawing in a group setting. These variables help make group sketching more productive and effective with stakeholders.

  • Remote Ideation: Synchronous or Asynchronous?

    Ideation in the UX design process can be conducted remotely: without having team members in the same room. This can be done synchronously (everybody participates at the same time) or asynchronously (people contribute at different times).

  • The Diverge-and-Converge Technique for UX Workshops

    By first working independently on a problem, then converging to share insights, teams can leverage the benefits of both work styles, leading to rapid data analysis, diverse ideas, and high-quality designs.

  • How to Get Stakeholders to Sketch: A Magic Formula

    In ideation and many other UX activities, we want to include stakeholders and get them to participate in sketching UI prototypes and other visuals. Here are four tactics to getting everybody to sketch in your UX workshops.

  • Pencils vs. Pixels for UI Protyping and Sketching

    UX designers answer the question of when they prefer to use hand-drawn sketches of a user interface design vs. pixel-perfect designs generated on a computer.

  • Remote Ideation: Synchronous vs. Asynchronous

    Asynchronous remote ideation allows people to contribute ideas whenever it’s convenient to do so, but synchronous sessions lead to faster results and more team building.

  • Affinity Diagramming: Collaborate, Sort and Prioritize UX Ideas

    Use the affinity diagramming method with stakeholders and members to efficiently categorize then prioritize UX ideas, research findings, and any other rich topics. Work together to quickly develop a shared understanding among your team.

  • How to Present UX Design Ideas

    Don't just show your proposed user-interface solution. Set the stage with the necessary background for understanding the design, and follow through with visuals that tell the full UX story.

  • Remote UX Work: The NN/g Case Study

    Remote UX work is challenging, but using digital collaboration and communication tools can mitigate some of its difficulties. Our recommendations are based on NN/g’s experience as a remote company.

  • How to Sketch a UI for Non-Designers

    "I can't draw," is a common phrase heard in ideation. But ideation happens in early stages of design and is meant to be messy. This video shows how to use basic shapes to convey UI elements.

  • Prioritization Matrices in UX Decision Making

    Prioritization charts or matrices can help UX practitioners base important decisions on objective, relevant criteria instead of subjective opinions.

  • Ideation Techniques for a One-Person UX Team

    Even a lone UX wolf can ideate design options, and structured ideation techniques help you explore the design space.

  • User Feedback vs. Innovation

    Relying too much on feedback from customers risks hampering innovation, so what is the best balance for UX design?

  • First Diverge, Then Converge During UX Workshops

    A general technique that's helpful in many kinds of UX workshops and design ideation is to first have team members work independently to create diverging ideas and solutions. Then, as a separate step, everybody works together to converge on the final outcome.

  • Design Ruts and Functional Fixedness

    A common problem during user experience ideation is when design teams are stuck on a traditional way of thinking about aspects of the design. Here are some tips for breaking out of such functional fixedness.

  • 4 Ways to Share Sketches in Remote Ideation

    Depending on how much your team can spend, your team might want to use tablets, document cameras, smartphones, or your computers’ webcams to share sketches.

  • Remote Ideation: Synchronous or Asynchronous?

    Ideation in the UX design process can be conducted remotely: without having team members in the same room. This can be done synchronously (everybody participates at the same time) or asynchronously (people contribute at different times).

  • How to Get Stakeholders to Sketch: A Magic Formula

    In ideation and many other UX activities, we want to include stakeholders and get them to participate in sketching UI prototypes and other visuals. Here are four tactics to getting everybody to sketch in your UX workshops.

  • Pencils vs. Pixels for UI Protyping and Sketching

    UX designers answer the question of when they prefer to use hand-drawn sketches of a user interface design vs. pixel-perfect designs generated on a computer.

  • Affinity Diagramming: Collaborate, Sort and Prioritize UX Ideas

    Use the affinity diagramming method with stakeholders and members to efficiently categorize then prioritize UX ideas, research findings, and any other rich topics. Work together to quickly develop a shared understanding among your team.

  • How to Present UX Design Ideas

    Don't just show your proposed user-interface solution. Set the stage with the necessary background for understanding the design, and follow through with visuals that tell the full UX story.

  • How to Sketch a UI for Non-Designers

    "I can't draw," is a common phrase heard in ideation. But ideation happens in early stages of design and is meant to be messy. This video shows how to use basic shapes to convey UI elements.

  • Prioritization Matrices in UX Decision Making

    Prioritization charts or matrices can help UX practitioners base important decisions on objective, relevant criteria instead of subjective opinions.

  • Ideation Techniques for a One-Person UX Team

    Even a lone UX wolf can ideate design options, and structured ideation techniques help you explore the design space.

  • Beating Creative Blocks in UX Design Through Reframing

    A method for getting unstuck from a design challenge. By reframing the problem, you can find inspiration in unexpected places.

  • How to Prioritize Ideas from UX Brainstorming Sessions

    Use ranking techniques to help turn workshop ideas into concrete action plans.

  • Ideation Doesn't Waste Time, It Saves Time

    Improve your UI design solutions by considering many ideas before settling on any one of them. A solid ideation methodology broadens your idea-generation capacity.

  • How to Draw a Wireframe (Even if You Can’t Draw)

    Even people with limited drawing abilities can learn to sketch a wireframe if they learn a few common conventions used to represent various design elements.

  • Scenario Mapping: Design Ideation Using Personas

    Persona-based scenarios can be leveraged to influence design through guided brainstorming workshops called scenario-mapping workshops.

  • Using “How Might We” Questions to Ideate on the Right Problems

    Constructing how-might-we questions generates creative solutions while keeping teams focused on the right problems to solve.

  • Remote UX Work: Guidelines and Resources

    Even though in-person UX sessions are typically ideal, sometimes budget or travel restrictions necessitate remote UX work. This article presents guidelines for remote user research, UX workshops or presentations, and collaboration.

  • How to Get Stakeholders to Sketch: A Magic Formula

    Collaborative sketching is a powerful tool for building buy-in for design decisions; however, it can be difficult to get stakeholders comfortable with the idea of drawing in a group setting. These variables help make group sketching more productive and effective with stakeholders.

  • The Diverge-and-Converge Technique for UX Workshops

    By first working independently on a problem, then converging to share insights, teams can leverage the benefits of both work styles, leading to rapid data analysis, diverse ideas, and high-quality designs.

  • Remote Ideation: Synchronous vs. Asynchronous

    Asynchronous remote ideation allows people to contribute ideas whenever it’s convenient to do so, but synchronous sessions lead to faster results and more team building.

  • Remote UX Work: The NN/g Case Study

    Remote UX work is challenging, but using digital collaboration and communication tools can mitigate some of its difficulties. Our recommendations are based on NN/g’s experience as a remote company.

  • Collaborative Agile Activities Reduce Silos and Align Perspectives

    All members of an Agile team, regardless of design skills, can contribute to the design of a product or feature during the development process.

  • A Model for Conducting UX Workshops and Exercises

    To ensure activity participants get the most out of UX activities, use a three-step process to conduct them: explain, execute, and examine.

  • Using Prioritization Matrices to Inform UX Decisions

    Visuals such as charts and matrices can help practitioners base important decisions on objective, relevant criteria instead of subjective opinions.

  • Affinity Diagramming for Collaboratively Sorting UX Findings and Design Ideas

    Affinity diagramming has long been used in business to organize large sets of ideas into clusters. In UX, the method is used to organize research findings or to sort design ideas in ideation workshops.

  • How to Deal With Bad Design Suggestions

    Gracefully respond to unsolicited design ideas, and prevent them from derailing good design. Turn them into UX learning experiences.

  • Ideation in Practice: How Effective UX Teams Generate Ideas

    Data from 257 UX professionals shows that quality UX ideas come from ideating early in the design cycle, drawing inspiration from user research, and working with a group. Many struggle with generating ideas because they lack time, managerial support, and a methodology for conducting effective ideation sessions.

  • Troubleshooting Group Ideation: 10 Fixes for More and Better UX Ideas

    Groups can bias individuals and impact collaborative ideation. A focus on getting as many ideas as possible can mitigate some of the negative group effects.

  • Functional Fixedness Stops You From Having Innovative Ideas

    People’s blindness to alternate uses of objects limits their problem-solving capabilities and stifles creativity. Overcome functional fixedness by abstracting problems to generate outside-the-box ideas.

  • Service Design 101

    Service design improves the experiences of both the user and employee by designing, aligning, and optimizing an organization’s operations to better support customer journeys.

  • Facilitating an Effective Design Studio Workshop

    Design studios are UX workshops that combine ideation and design critique with idea prioritization and help teams collaborate and feel invested in the project.

  • UX Stories Communicate Designs

    Help internal audiences empathize with users and buy into your design goals with well-crafted stories that build insight and focus on users and their needs.

  • Ideation for Everyday Design Challenges

    Improve your UI design solutions by considering many ideas before settling on any one of them. A solid ideation methodology broadens your idea-generation capacity.