[2022] Tweets by Markyetter on 05 Aug

1. The round robin - this is for when you want deeper discussion and conversation to happen. It’s not about the most ideas or coming to the answer in one go as much. State your topic, go around the room to let each individual pitch an idea or even just muse on the subject

As a Game Design leader a super frequent part of my job is to run brainstorms or problem solving meetings with the team (Because it’s not all about a single genius coming up with all ideas) After a lot of these I’ve found it’s not one size fits all - here are 3 that I like:

Then go around the room and everyone shares their favorite (no discussion) Then it’s time for round two - after hearing all of those good ideas go back to solo brainstorming. This is where a lot of the good stuff comes out, and at the end you have a giant pile of options

2. The idea factory - this is just about huge volume of ideas and can work well with large groups Using some note taking tool like MIro or literal sticky notes have everyone generate ideas for a chunk of time (say 15 min)

Side note, I learned somewhere that allowing discussion and criticism of ideas helps to generate more and better ones. (Keep it respectful of course) In the same vein, “bad ideas” that you already know have issues are also super helpful to spur along the conversation

Everyone else in the room is listening so there is a lot of good “oh I could use that to adapt my own thinking” going on in peoples heads. Also after each speaker you can have a brief window for others to chime in with their “yes ands” or “hey what about this problem”

Anyway those are my 3 favorites that I use all the time. If you all have better methods please tell me!

Important to note that these “winner” ideas shouldn’t be the final answers you go with. It’s a helpful starting point, but you should then really do your diligence, design them in detail, see how costly they are, etc

Step three, everyone in the room gets a small number of votes (dots) to put on their favorite ideas. Then you discuss as a full group the ideas with the most votes. Hash out the details, poke holes in them, add on to them.

Step two, quickly group similar ideas together. Don’t be too aggressive with this, it would be worse to lose something specific and important in an idea bc you really wanted to group things

3. I think producers call this lean coffee - this is good for generating ideas but especially good for narrowing down to a few and evaluating which are the group’s favorites Step one everyone generates ideas on their own using sticky notes or miro- put them in one place