What may sound, feel, and look like chaos is actually critical to creatively solving complex user problems. From the color-coded Six Thinking Hats to the acronym-driven SCAMPER method, these out-of-the-box ideation techniques can help you challenge assumptions, explore multiple perspectives, and move beyond your first good idea.
But Why?
Why should we care about ideation instead of just running with one good idea? Ideation brings together your logical thinking and imagination. It’s the part of the design process where you generate lots of ideas and explore different possibilities. This gives you more options to work with as you create prototypes and develop innovative solutions for your users.
Last week, I explored 6 POV statements across 3 popular apps: Spotify, Venmo, and The Weather Channel. The POV statements focus on making digital apps easier and more useful. Spotify users want uninterrupted music and better control over how their content is organized. Venmo users need payments to be fast, safe, and easy to understand so they can avoid mistakes. Weather Channel users want quick, reliable weather information without unnecessary ads or features, along with enough control to prepare for severe weather. Overall, the statements show that we value simple, efficient, and dependable digital experiences.
This week I dove into ideation techniques using 2 different techniques per POV statement for 12 total, to generate as many solutions as possible. But there was a unique caveat I had to consider when ideating. Spotify and The Weather Channel’s POVs are that users need uninterrupted experiences (less to no ads), but they also need ad revenue to survive as free-tier businesses. Any solution has to manage both goals at once, not just satisfy the user.
Deep Dive: Spotify’s Ad Problem
Spotify was an interesting challenge because the user need and business need conflict. Users want fewer interruptions, but Spotify depends on ad revenue from free-tier listeners. Free users hear 15- to 60-second audio ads between songs, see display ads, and can sometimes earn short ad-free periods by watching sponsored content.
I started with Six Thinking Hats, looking at one problem through six different lenses and angles. The hats in order are white (facts), red (feelings), black (risks), yellow (benefits), green (new ideas), blue (process/next steps). The White and Red Hats revealed the fact that free-tier users have ads, and there’s no way around it, which is frustrating. The Black Hat focused on risk: too many ads can frustrate users and push them away, but too many ad options or tiers could also make the experience confusing. The Yellow Hat focused on benefits: those occasional ad-free periods already show that users enjoy having a break from interruptions. The Green Hat led to the strongest idea: instead of making users choose between ads and no ads, Spotify could offer different levels of ad experiences.
Then I used Crazy 8s, generating ideas quickly with sketching. Some included ad pause windows (15, 30, or 60 minutes), choosing when ads appear, ad-free tokens that can be earned or purchased, focus-time subscriptions with fewer ads, front-loading ads at the start of a session, and scaling ad frequency based on listening time.
What stood out was that both techniques led to the same conclusion: whether users pause, schedule, reduce, or earn fewer ads, the core idea is giving them more control over the experience. A tiered ad system could improve the listening experience while still allowing Spotify to earn revenue. A win for both parties!
Of all the techniques I tried, Six Thinking Hats was the most useful because it helped me think through the facts, risks, benefits, and possibilities before jumping to a solution. It gave me confidence that the final idea wasn’t just creative, but practical too.
Venmo and the Worst Idea That Worked
This technique was the most fun to me. I was actually laughing through the process. The goal was to come up with the worst possible solution, so I imagined Venmo sending constant notifications for every tiny step of a transaction and requiring both people to complete two-factor authentication before each step could continue. While absurd, it definitely feels relatable.
Of course, those ideas would be incredibly annoying, that’s the point. But flipping them around led to a useful insight: maybe users don’t need to verify everything. Maybe they just need one clear verification at the moment that matters most. The strongest idea was to add a single confirmation step before sending money to a new recipient or sending a large amount. It gives users confidence when they need it without turning every transaction into a dizzying experience.
A Few More Techniques Worth Knowing
I also explored a handful of other ideation techniques that each pushed the problem in a different direction. SCAMPER helped rework Spotify’s existing features and led to the idea of combining AI recommendations with customizable content organization. Mind Mapping branched out from the idea of user control and revealed how automation and customization could work together. Analogical Thinking borrowed fraud-detection patterns from banking to inspire smarter, risk-based payment verification for Venmo. Challenge Assumptions uncovered places where Venmo expects users to understand things that aren’t always obvious, such as what “pending” means or when a payment becomes final.
For the Weather Channel, Randomness used a compass as inspiration and pointed toward a simple, always-visible weather display. Reverse Thinking challenged the assumption that more information is always better and suggested a stripped-down forecast focused on only the essentials. Break and Build connected specific weather-preparation tasks to the larger need for certainty and led to the idea of a forecast-based prep checklist. Provocation started with the impossible question, “What if the app could guarantee it won’t rain?” and turned it into a practical idea: providing backup plans before bad weather arrives.
Instead of walking through every exercise here, I’ll link the full PDF below where you can flip through 12 ideation activities, sketches, and outcomes in detail.
What’s Worth Pursuing
If I had to pick just one idea from this entire evaluation, it would be Spotify’s tiered ad experience. Unlike many of the other solutions, it directly addresses both the user’s needs and the business’s needs at the same time. Users get more control by choosing to reduce, pause, or schedule their ads, while Spotify still preserves the ad revenue that supports its free tier.
What makes this idea especially strong is that both Six Thinking Hats and Crazy 8s led me to the same ideas through different paths. My instinct is that when multiple ideation techniques are pointing to the same solution, maybe there’s something worth diving deeper into. A tiered ad system can improve the listening experience without forcing Spotify to choose between user satisfaction and profitability.
Wrap-up
What this whole exercise reveals and reinforces is that the best ideas don’t usually come from our first ideas. If you allow yourself to get creative and explore different ideation techniques, you can look at the same problem through different lenses. Ideation isn’t about finding a solution immediately. It’s about giving yourself enough different ways to think that the strongest solutions have a chance to emerge. And if you let it, it can be pretty fun.
For deeper insight into my ideation exercises, view the PDF below.
AI tools supported proofreading and editing for this post.