Here is my reflection on the completed ideation phase for the first rapid ideation sprint of the course. I have followed the GIBBS methodology (cited in The University of Edinburgh 2021a) which you can read more about here. I chose this approach because of the ones I’ve tried so far it’s the one that is giving me the most insight into events by digging so deeply and from so many angles.

A note on Week 4 content

The content covered this week was on time management which is an area that I am familiar with as I have often juggled competing priorities in the past. In my previous job we also used Trello boards for instance to ensure that projects moved along and kept stakeholders informed. I am going to approach RI1 with tools I have used in the past and see how they hold up against these new challenges however I am choosing to leave Trello boards behind as I find that these are most helpful when working in a wider team and in I will be flying solo on this occasion.

Reflection on RI1 Ideation

✅ Description

For the first rapid ideation sprint (RI1) I chose to tackle the ideation with a mix of known and recent ideation techniques. I started by brainstorming extensively, a technique that encourages you to think expansively, in great quantity and to not worry about the quality of your ideas (Mindtools 2022). I experimented brainstorming on this IKEA roll of continuous paper I’ve had for a while as I often find that running out of page can interrupt the thinking flow. Knowing that there was always more paper allowed me to ‘think big’ in every sense of the expression.

Click on the photos to zoom further into them if curious.

Fig. 1: Sarah Gomes Munro 2023. The brainstorm

Fig, 2 - 4: Sarah Gomes Munro 2023. Zoom ins on the brainstorm

Fig. 5 - 7: Sarah Gomes Munro 2023. Zoom in on specific areas of interest

I then took the themes my curiosity most snagged on and mashed them up following the IDEO mash up technique which I had first used in a previous challenge and greatly enjoyed. In it you list as many elements pertaining to a subject as possible first and then mash them up to come up with new innovative solutions (IDEO 2023). It was only my second time using this technique and I chose to throw more themes into the pan to see what combinations I could come up with. I noticed that I had a tendency of repeating what I did when I first came across this technique mashing up an emotion / something emotional with a concrete thing like map reading + complex relationships.