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Ever thought of ideas that turned out to be in your list of “Worst Ideas Ever”? You’re not alone. But believe or not – they are really needed in an essential process called the Design Thinking Process.
Design Thinking
So, before you learn why wacky ideas are great, let’s start with the design thinking process. What is it? Why do we need it? And above all, what’s it got to do with ideas? Design thinking is a methodology-a process used to find solutions to problems. It can be used for the simplest of problems, like to decide when to wake up so that you go to work on time and you don’t feel too exhausted, or for complex problems, like finding ways to provide clean drinking water to everyone in the world without using too much money.
Ideating Worse
Did you notice it? Ideate is the third step in the design thinking process. According to Oxford Languages, ideation is “the formation of ideas or concepts”. It’s one of the most fun steps in the whole process! Simply put, it’s the step where you brainstorm all sorts of ideas to solve your problem, and the worse the idea……the better. I’m serious! So before you start thinking that I myself might be crazy, I’ll tell you why.
When you and your team start finding the worst possible solutions, you get relaxed, boost your confidence, and flourish your creativity. This really helps you to form great ideas, and who knows? Maybe one of your worst ideas could turn out to be your best ever!
My Story
Here’s a story. I had gotten a project from my club, and I have to find ways to make people want to come to a green park right outside a plaza. Here are some ideas, worse ones:
- We could make the park so huge, that they would have to enter the park to cross to the plaza. Then, by looking at the scenery, they would love to stay there!
- We could make a lion statue that emitted roars (with a speaker) as soon as people entered the plaza. People would be so scared; they would rush to the park nearby!
- We could disguise it to look like another huge shop, but when people really enter it, it would turn out to be a park!
Crazy, right? Probably the second one (with the lion statue) would come on top of my “Worst Ideas Ever” list! But there’s an idea I got from them. We could actually use lion statues and other animals to make a theme park, which would attract more people (instead of scaring them). And also, we could actually use my first idea to complete the job. Turns out that it’s actually a good idea!
So, as much as you might think that a good idea is what we need to solve a problem, bad ideas work really well. Any worse ideas?
By
Kalluri Deetya Reddy
Grade 7
