Note: PSI wishes to acknowledge the inspiration for certain principles described in this activity guide from the following resources: The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design by IDEO,org; design thinking bootleg by d.school at Stanford University; the Introduction to Human-Centered Design online course taught by IDEO.org through +Acumen, a program of the Acumen Fund, Inc.; and PSI Board Member and Maverick Collective Founding Member, Pam Scott.
“Ideation” is a systematic approach to creative problem-solving. It involves various techniques and exercises that teams can use to help generate ideas that go beyond the usual assumptions about how to solve certain types of problems and find innovative, new solutions. This can be extremely helpful when designing new intervention programs in situations where existing models aren’t working or don’t apply. It can also be used to brainstorm ideas for a particular element of your intervention — for example, for the launch of a product, you may want to do ideation to come up with new ideas to promote the product. However, it may not be appropriate to ideate across all the P’s.