Tools in Product Ideation

"Ideation" as a formal step is ubiquitous in product discovery, becoming more widely known from renowned IDEO's shopping cart design process. However, while IDEO may have ideated using only sticky notes and notepads, more tools are available to product creators and owners today. Miro, Lucidchart, Mural, Figjam -- these digital whiteboards provide extensive templates and collaboration features.

But what should you use? I see two main concerns: what works best, and what ideation needs to produce.

As Teresa Torres noted in her book Continuous Discovery Habits, ideation is best done through a cycle of individual work, then through group work. In the quiet of your own office, coffee shop, park bench, list lots of ideas. Upwards of 200. Do short stints in multiple places, to stoke the creative fires through novel surroundings.

Given the portability, I find notepads and stacking sticky notes to be superior to most digital tools. In particular, I use pocket notebooks, though any blank piece of paper works in a pinch.

However, when it comes to sharing ideas with your team, digital whiteboards win. They provide a single source of truth, can be accessed by anyone, at any time, and are more easily edited than a group drawing or a wall of sticky notes. When we take into account executive signoff and roadmap creation, tools that easily package into presentations and map to Trello boards / Jira epics aid further by easing product execution. For this purpose, I use Lucidchart.

So all in all, my answer would be: use both physical & digital tools at different stages of ideation.

In brief:

1. Ideate by coming up with ideas individually, then discussing them as a group

2. Do step 1 again

3. Use pocket notebooks for your individual sessions

4. Organize, synthesize & present with Lucidcharts

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