The next step in the project, ideation, was overwhelming to me at first. Although I was a little more comfortable with generating ideas due to the bootcamp we went through at the beginning of the semester, I wanted to think through each idea I came up with before putting it on our board. As a detail-oriented person, I wanted to determine the feasibility of the idea before sharing it. However, when Professor Luchs asked us to come up with crazy ideas that did not have to be feasible or profitable, I found myself being more willing to put any and every idea that came to mind on the board. After doing this step, it changed the way I approached the second round of ideation with our new problem statement.
The second round surprised me, because my group thought we had settled on the idea from our first round of ideation. We all assumed we would just end up deciding on the same idea. However, it surprised us all when the second ideation round produced not necessarily a new idea, but a more refined and focused one. The second idea had similarities to the one we had settled on from the first round and could have even been a feature of the first idea. But the differences between the two rested in the fact that the first was broad and unfocused and the second one was narrow and focused.
Overall, I felt that the process was extremely beneficial for my group. Normally, we discuss ideas or specifics of the project together. But with this process, which forced us to work individually, we could consider all of the ideas at once after they all were up on the board. By comparing and contrasting the ideas, we could see which ideas stood out and even how we could combine multiple ideas to create one cohesive focus. For myself though, I felt like this process truly helped me learn to be freer and more open-minded when it comes to my own ideas and that crazy ideas may not actually be crazy.