SeventyTwo

We’re hiring!

Join the team at SeventyTwo as our new Project & Delivery Coordinator.

If you love keeping projects on track, supporting clients, and working closely with designers and developers - this could be your next move.

• 30-hour work week (9am–3pm, Mon–Fri)
• A collaborative, friendly team
• A mix of project management, client support, and coordination
• A modern office close to cafes & retailers

If you’ve got experience in web or digital project delivery, check out the role here:

https://www.seek.co.nz/job/85796346

Yesterday we held an Ideation Session here in the office. We’re undergoing a rebrand just now (more on this soon) and I was struggling to come up with original ideas for a web feature that will be part of our updated website.

In situations like this it helps to gather everyone involved and run an Ideation Workshop. Ideation is the process of generating ideas - lots of ideas - through brainstorming, sketching and discussion.

The aim of the session is to generate lots of ideas in a short time, ideally no longer than 15mins. There are no bad ideas, no judgement or negative feedback allowed but you need to stay focussed on the topic.

Our goal was for everyone to stick 10 ideas up on the wall, one idea per post-it. It was okay to read colleagues ideas as this could spark another unique idea.

In the end we had just under 60 possible solutions to our problem.

Once the timer signalled the end of the 15mins we had a quick review and anyone that felt their idea required further explanation had a chance to speak.

We selected the most interesting ideas and then each of us had 3 votes to give to the post-it(s) we thought were the best. This was done by marking with a sharpie.

At the end of this process that too around 25mins in total we had started with 50+ ideas which we quickly whittled down to about a dozen and after voting we have 3 solutions to our problem.

Now it’s a simple case of weighing up the pros and cons of each before making a final decision.

Ideation Workshops work really well, they’re fun and its a great way to bring the team together. Most importantly it can be a real time saver and can yield some really creative solutions to difficult problems.

What do you do when you’re stuck in a rut or have a problem to solve? Is this a technique you’ve used before - let us know in the comments.