Our goal is to explore as many ideas as possible, regardless of how feasible they may or may not be. Diverging helps gain insights that comes from radically different perspectives and approaches to solving a problem. Also, once we begin eliminating some these options in the next phase, we are given reason to be more confident in the options we do move forward with because we have explored so many alternatives.
- Have a mindset of "Yes" and constantly ask “How might we?”
The team should familiarize themselves with each persona's goals, tasks, and key questions, as these are what will lay the groundwork for the Diverge phase.
Each team member should organize their ideas on either paper, whiteboard, or Sketch -- whatever works best for sharing and discussion.
Before sketching ideas, each individual can search online for visualization examples that answer similar business questions.
A warm up exercise to start generating ideas. People are given time to individually explore the problem however they choose to.
Borrowed from Google Ventures’ book, Sprint, this exercise, each member takes a sheet of printer paper, folds it in half 3 times to get 8 rectangles. They then have 5 minutes to sketch out ideas for a specific feature or flow in a product. After they’re done, they share with the team.
Affinity mapping can also be used in this phase to collect and organize ideas from designers (instead of answers from interviewees).
Sometimes two or multiple concepts could be used to answer one business question. A storyboard can be used in this case to group these concepts and tell a story.
One of the 3 methods - Brainstorm, Crazy 8's, Affinity mapping - should be required.
- Exploratory research
- Mind mapping
- Brainstorm
- Crazy 8’s
- Affinity mapping
- Storyboard