Worst Possible Idea

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What is Worst Possible Idea?

Worst Possible Idea is an ideation method where team members purposefully seek the worst solutions in ideation sessions. The “inverted” search process relaxes them, boosts their confidence and stokes their creativity so they can examine these ideas, challenge their assumptions and gain insights towards great ideas.

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See how seeds of wisdom grow from even the most “toxic” soil.

Why go for the Worst Possible Idea?

Some people clam up in group sessions such as brainstorming, although everyone in a design team technically should feel free to explore all possibilities on the road to the best solution. With their peers surrounding them, they may be reluctant to offer input, fearing their ideas will make them look silly or short-sighted. Team members may also hold back on mentioning—and then forget—fragments or beginnings of plans that are actually valuable, fearing someone will rip their embryonic brainchild apart and humiliate them. When your design team uses the Worst Possible Idea technique, you avoid this by flipping the playing field. The name of the game is to produce the silliest, craziest ideas. Therefore, as nobody can look silly, nobody will worry about losing face. Better still, because the premise of the approach seems ridiculous, the group’s laughter relaxes us further as we proceed.

Author, president and co-founder of The Growth Engine Company LLC, Bryan Mattimore coined the term “worst possible idea” when he described turning the search for innovative ideas with a group of professionals upside down. The point was to kick-start a fruitful process for thinking up ideas by breaking with convention. Instead of getting stuck on trying for good ideas the group was encouraged to adopt a radically different approach. Soon, because everyone was searching for downright awful ideas, they could loosen up. And because the group could relax enough, they managed to overcome the impasse or mental constipation which the pressure of other ideation techniques can impose. In the case of the individuals Mattimore worked with, as they generated many seemingly terrible ideas, they found they could get on track towards what actually would work.

Steps in the Worst Possible Idea Method

The real power of Worst Possible Idea is what happens after we start to feel more at ease about offering our thoughts. Although you and your team are free to kick back and try for the most ludicrous-sounding notions, there is a method to the madness.

To practice Worst Possible Idea, as group members we should:

  1. Come up with as many bad ideas as we can.

  2. List all the properties of those terrible ideas.

  3. List what makes the worst of these so very bad.

  4. Search for the opposite of the worst attribute.

  5. Consider substituting something else in for the worst attribute.

  6. Mix and match various awful ideas to see what happens.

What can come from Worst Possible Ideas?

When design team members identify a rotten-looking or “preposterous” idea and deconstruct it to see what makes it tick as such, they can find powerful insights that may serve as foundations for good plans elsewhere.

“Bad ideas started flowing. "Here's a really bad idea," said one banker. "We could round down everyone's deposits to the nearest dollar. Most people probably wouldn't notice." Said another, "let's make mistakes in their favor, give everyone extra money every time they make a transaction. Now that's a bad idea!" More laughter," but if you've ever seen the Bank of America "keep the change" savings program, perhaps it began in this session.”

— Bob Dorf, Co-author of The Startup Owner’s Manual (writing about Bryan Mattimore)

Learn More about Worst Possible Idea

Find details on Worst Possible Idea and other Design Thinking techniques in the Interaction Design Foundation’s course.

Read Bob Dorf’s piece that sheds light on how Bryan Mattimore wielded Worst Possible Idea with powerful results.

Psychology author Drake Baer examines the dynamic of shame-culture in ideation sessions, offering some valuable and amusing insights.

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Literature on Worst Possible Idea

Here’s the entire UX literature on Worst Possible Idea by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:

Learn more about Worst Possible Idea

Take a deep dive into Worst Possible Idea with our course Design Thinking: The Ultimate Guide .

Some of the world’s leading brands, such as Apple, Google, Samsung, and General Electric, have rapidly adopted the design thinking approach, and design thinking is being taught at leading universities around the world, including Stanford d.school, Harvard, and MIT. What is design thinking, and why is it so popular and effective?

Design Thinking is not exclusive to designers—all great innovators in literature, art, music, science, engineering and business have practiced it. So, why call it Design Thinking? Well, that’s because design work processes help us systematically extract, teach, learn and apply human-centered techniques to solve problems in a creative and innovative way—in our designs, businesses, countries and lives. And that’s what makes it so special.

The overall goal of this design thinking course is to help you design better products, services, processes, strategies, spaces, architecture, and experiences. Design thinking helps you and your team develop practical and innovative solutions for your problems. It is a human-focused, prototype-driven, innovative design process. Through this course, you will develop a solid understanding of the fundamental phases and methods in design thinking, and you will learn how to implement your newfound knowledge in your professional work life. We will give you lots of examples; we will go into case studies, videos, and other useful material, all of which will help you dive further into design thinking. In fact, this course also includes exclusive video content that we've produced in partnership with design leaders like Alan Dix, William Hudson and Frank Spillers!

This course contains a series of practical exercises that build on one another to create a complete design thinking project. The exercises are optional, but you’ll get invaluable hands-on experience with the methods you encounter in this course if you complete them, because they will teach you to take your first steps as a design thinking practitioner. What’s equally important is you can use your work as a case study for your portfolio to showcase your abilities to future employers! A portfolio is essential if you want to step into or move ahead in a career in the world of human-centered design.

Design thinking methods and strategies belong at every level of the design process. However, design thinking is not an exclusive property of designers—all great innovators in literature, art, music, science, engineering, and business have practiced it. What’s special about design thinking is that designers and designers’ work processes can help us systematically extract, teach, learn, and apply these human-centered techniques in solving problems in a creative and innovative way—in our designs, in our businesses, in our countries, and in our lives.

That means that design thinking is not only for designers but also for creative employees, freelancers, and business leaders. It’s for anyone who seeks to infuse an approach to innovation that is powerful, effective and broadly accessible, one that can be integrated into every level of an organization, product, or service so as to drive new alternatives for businesses and society.

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Interaction Design Foundation - IxDF. (2016, November 26). What is Worst Possible Idea?. Interaction Design Foundation - IxDF.

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