Elevating Ideation Experiences

Kindling creativity through workshop ambiance and developing an AI-based ideation aid

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Scope
Research into Ideation & Creativity
Capacity Building in Design Thinking

Core Team
One Design Researcher, One UX Designer, One Developer, Two Scientists

Artefacts

Ideation Aid App: User Flow of App, Wireframes, Defining Ideation Workflow with AI, Prompts with multiple LLMs

Ideation Workshop : Ideation Session Routine & Schedule, Ideation Method Directions, Discussion Guides for Feedback Interviews

Summary

The Design Research team conducted multiple ideation workshops, to conceptualise creative solutions for problem statements of business groups in a large multinational consultancy. The experience of these ideation workshops was elevated along two directions :

An AI-based aid for supporting and enhancing ideation activities
Tweaking the ambiance of the venue to enhance the creative spirit of participants.

This was part of the capacity building responsibilities of the team. Being in the R&D unit of the organisation, the new tools & frameworks developed by the team intended to enhance the ideation & design thinking practice of business groups.

The contents have been abstracted in accordance to NDA norms. Focus is kept on the process and role.

The design research team ideated upon on several problem statements. These were received from business units of the organisation, companies within the corporate group or drawn from internal or academic projects. Experiments to elevate ideation were carried out with problem statements from several domains, such as :

Education & Upskilling

Employee Engagement

Legal Technology

Fashion Retail Experience

Cars & Transportation

Refinery Safety

Factory Worker Wellbeing

Agriculture & Sustainability

The experience of ideating for the problem statements offered new research & development possibilities. Ideation experiences were elevated through two directions :

Augmenting Ideation with AI

Designing an aid for ideation activities through Human-AI collaboration

Kindling Creativity in the Venue

Tweaking the ambiance with elements of
Music, Scent, Curated Décor and Lego bricks.

Augmenting Ideation with AI

Designing an application for ideation activities through Human-AI collaboration

Prompting with AI
across various LLM models to generate ideation material for ideation methods

Creating step-wise AI workflow
from ideation material to generating ideas,

Designing an Ideation Aid

for the ideation practice of designers

An application was conceptualised to support the ideation practice of the team with artificial intelligence. The application explored means to :

Create Material for ideation methods

Generate ideas for ideation statements

Evaluating ideas from ideation workshops

Activities requiring a blend of analytical and generative content were outlined. Through prompt engineering, material for ideation practice was generated and scrutinised for suitability. In collaboration with developers and UX designers, wireframes for the application were created and designed into a functional aid for ideation practice of the team.

Kindling Creativity in the Venue

Tweaking the ambiance with elements of Music, Scent, Curated Décor and Lego bricks.

Organising Ideation Workshops
Planning presentation content, participant recruitment & venue setup

Ideation Method
carried out for the initial half of the ideation workshop

Element introduced
in intervals across the second half of the ideation workshop

Change in Creative spirit
was gauged through Participant behaviour and their feedback

Problem statements were received and broken down into How Might We (HMW) ideation statements. Suitable Ideation methods from the in-house research repository were selected and contextualised for ideation statements. Ideation workshops were organised - suitable venues within the office were chosen, participants were recruited and workshop artefacts were made to engage them along individual and group ideation activities.

Based on findings from research into creativity, suitable elements were identified and incrementally introduced into the workshop routine. Participant behaviours were observed and change in creative spirit was monitored. Through progressive iterations, an ideation SOP was articulated for design practice of internal and external teams.

Elements

Prompting with AI
across various LLM models to generate ideation material for ideation methods

Creating step-wise AI workflow
from ideation material to generating ideas,

Designing a One-stop App

facilitating a collaborative Human-AI ideation

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Creating Material for ideation methods

Generate ideas for ideation statements

Evaluating ideas from ideation sessions

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Tasks

Outcomes

I was part of five member design team involved in the project. I performed several tasks and undertook multiple responsibilities, such as :

Conducting literature review and synthesise relevant and actionable findings for participants of ideation workshop.
Organising ideation sessions end-to-end, from recruiting participants, curating content and routine, venue setup to documenting workshops and ideas.
Interfacing with multiple participants and administration for logistics and operations of ideation workshops.
Creating suitable frameworks for assessing ideas and drafting prompts for AI-based evaluation.
Prompting with multiple LLMs and scrutinising the output for alignment with ideation practice of the team.
Brainstorming with designers and developers to create wireframes, decide user flow and design the ideation aid.

Conducting Ideation workshop was a recurring activity undertaken by the team. Some of the outcomes from the aforementioned activities are :

Ideation Aid: An AI-based aid for carrying out ideation activities was designed. The aid is an actively used in the ideation and design research practice of the team.
Ideation Workshop SOP : A recommended routine of ideation sessions and workshops with novel ambient interventions has been outlined for the design practice of team and business groups.
Ideation Method Repository : Experience of the ideation and feedback from participants collated to create and continuously refine the collection of ideation methods.
Intellectual Property Contributions : Research papers sharing learnings from ideation experiments awaiting publication. Select aspects of ideation tool undergoing the patenting process.