Brainstorm

9 min readOct 18, 2017

Individual Idea Generation:

Problem Statement: “How might we make putting groceries away faster and easier?”
My first task was to come up with 30 ideas, for my problem statement on my own. This was quite difficult, but I looked at things around me, online, my notes from research, and recent movies I watched for inspiration. I tried to come up with ideas that answer the question, “How might we make putting groceries away faster and easier?” For example the first three Ideas I came up with were the “Slide 2 Pantry”, which is a slide that puts goods on the shelf in an orderly fashion by itself. This makes putting groceries away faster, since you wouldn't have to organize where they go yourself, it would do it for you. Then I thought of the “Butler”, which puts away all your groceries for you. This is very simple and, makes putting away groceries a whole lot easier and faster. My third idea was called the “Lazy Susan Shelf”, which is a shelf but has multiple lazy susans built into it. This makes putting groceries away easier, since you do not have to reach to the back of a shelf anymore. Instead you can just rotate the shelf. Then I came up with a plethora of other ideas.

New Warm-Up Game:

Before I conducted my group brainstorming session, I came up with a game called “One Two Ryhme”. At first I thought the game would be played by one person starting with a random word. Then the person next to them will have to come up with a word that rhymes with that. I tested this game with a couple of my friends before my brainstorming session and good thing I did, because this didn’t stay entertaining for long. I decided to modify this by letting the player that last rhymed a word able to pick anyone playing to go next. This made the game a bit more interesting. I then modifyed it one last time. So, now the first player chooses a random word and then also chooses the next person to go too. But, now the second player chooses another random word and then they choose another person, to rhyme with the first person that went. Then the third player chooses a fourth to rhyme with the second player. So, now my warm-up game is much more interesting since, you have to be on your toes at all times and have to keep track of which word you have to rhyme with. I also planned on having them play “Look at me!”, “Word ball”, and “Story spine”.

Playing “One Two Rhyme” (Left), Playing “Look at Me!” (Middle), Playing “Story Spine” (Right)

Session Organization:

For my brainstorming session I booked a room with a big enough table for all my participants to sit around each other. The room also had a big white board, which was useful for hanging up all the ideas, and later sorting them. I had five participants with me for my brainstorming session. First, Anna (in the grey sweatshirt), she is from south Minneapolis, Minnesota and studying psychology. Next, Carol (in the blue long sleeve), she is studying political science and from Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. Then Maddie (in the purple long sleeve) is from Green bay, Wisconsin and studying biology. Deep (in the black jacket), is from Kenya and studying finance. Lastly Maggie, the fifth person (in the white long sleeve), is from Hartland, Wisconsin and studying retail merchandising as of right now. Sadly Maggie had to leave early from the session so she could not vote and help sort but, I filled in for her voting part.

My group mid-way through the brainstorming process

I tried getting a group of students together that had different enough majors, since I thought that would help diversify the group. I also asked my friend that I met, who is from Kenya. I thought he would be a good participant since, he might have different viewpoints. Then before brainstorming my group played my game “One Two Rhyme”. I also had them play “Look at me!”, “Word ball”, and “Story spine”. “Word ball” was definitely the favorite among the group and we played it again later as a break during brainstorming. For the brainstorming prompt I came up with, “How might we make putting groceries away faster and easier?” I came up with this, based off my problem statement three from my user research blog; which was, “People need a way to automatically sort their groceries because people’s top priorities for organization are for speed, simplicity, and for saving money. An automatic organizer will save time and make putting grocries away faster and easier. It will lastly save money since less food will go bad if the older food is dispensed first.” During the idea generation time the group I facilitated came up with 71 ideas in 27 minutes. They had an IPM (ideas per minute) of 2.63 and an IPM per person of .53. To help my group come up with more ideas I bought gummy worms and rewarded each person with one for every three ideas they came up with.

Sorting and Voting:

After coming up with 71 new ideas and my 30 ideas, that I already had in my sketch book. My participants had a tough challenge of organizing all their ideas then voting for the top ideas out of the 101 ideas. I made all my participants organize all their ideas silently. This made the process go by much faster, since they would not be able to, fight over or ask where which idea goes.

(Left) My group just starting to organize, (Middle) My group halfway done, (Right) My group completely done sorting and voting.

Once my group finished sorting I allowed them each to vote ten times. Five votes for the most creative ideas and five votes for feasible/ logical ideas. Maggie left by this point, so I stepped in for her and used her ten votes. There was a total of 50 votes casted, 25 for being the most creative, and 25 for being the most feasible. I used sticky notes for everyone to cast their votes with. The sticky notes with a blue line on them were for being the most creative, while the plain ones were for being the most feasible.
The ten ideas that had the most votes were:
“Magnetz”, “Sorter Gun”, “Organize by Material”, “Reverse Vending Machine”, “Glowing Match” “Slide”, “Alphabetize”, “Siri Pantry”, “Pantry Bins”, and “Lazy Susan Shelf”. Then I thought and honorable mention should be the “Portable Shelfs”, since it is a good idea and fell off the wall before voting.
Categories-
“Mechanical” was the first category my group sorted, this group had many ideas that involved mechanical systems. The ideas I came up with that would fit in this category would be “Slide 2 Pantry”, “Reverse Vending Machine”, “Fishing Shelf”, “Pantry Chair”, “Self Sorting Pantry”, “Vacuum Tubes”, “Ferris Wheel Pantry”, “Weighted Levers”, “Bowling Sweeper”, “Vacuum 2 Spot”, and “Chip Zipline”.

“Moving” was the second category my group came up with. This consisted of different ways to move groceries. My ideas that would fit in this area would be “Shelf Backpack”, “Elevator Stool”, and “Tunnel to Trunk”.

“Super” was the third category and this contained a bunch of ideas that involved superpowers or more infeasible ideas. My ideas that would have fit would have been “Rising Expired Cans”, “Magic Trunk 2 Shelf”, “The Force”, and “UFO”.

“Oragnization” was the fourth category and this contained ideas that had ways to organize a pantry, or ways that could help sorting a pantry. My ideas that would fit here are “Lazy Susan Shelf”, “Pantry Bins”, “Dissolvable Bags”, “Siri Pantry”, “Can Stacker”, and “Mirror”.

“People” was another category and this dealt with other ways humans can help make putting away groceries faster and easier. My idea that would fit here is called the “Butler”.

“Speed” was the sixth category and all these ideas were directly correlated to speed. I didn't have many ideas that belonged to this category but the ones that did were “Glowing Match”, “Two Songs Played”, and “Self-Destructive Pantry”.

“Robotic” was the last category they came up with and this held ideas that all had some robot type machine in it. My ideas that fit here were “Self Putting Away Pantry”, and “Bionic Arm”.

Top Ideas:

While determining the top ten ideas I mainly accounted for which ten had the most votes. Although some that were highly voted for, are already common practices or not sellable. Like sorting by material or the alphabet. So I chose a couple different ideas that were not voted as high to fill in their spot. The new top ten ideas are now, “Magnetz”, “Sorter Gun”, “Portable Shelfs”, “Reverse Vending Machine”, “Glowing Match” “Slide”, “Fishing Shelf”, “Siri Pantry”, “Pantry Bins”, and “Lazy Susan Shelf”.