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5 Online
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Brainstorming
Techniques
HR

There are dozens of brainstorming

exercises designed to get ideas
Research
flowing. Here are five of our favorites.
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 5 Online Brainstorming Techniques

Research
Online Crazy Eights
For freeing up people’s imagination, sketching can be better
than writing—and sketching fast is a great way to silence our
inner critic. That’s what Crazy Eights is all about.

How to do it:

■ P
 repare the online whiteboard, giving each person an
area marked off into eight sections.
■ M
 eet on Zoom, Microsoft Teams or another live video or
chat app and make sure everyone understands the goal
and the question.
■ A
 sk each person to make eight sketches, each taking
one minute.
■ Each person presents their sketches to the wider group. Marketing
■ Cluster/Discuss/Prioritize and advance the best ideas!

This Crazy 8s Brainstorming Template contributed by the

Developer
Lightning Design team at Salesforce

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 5 Online Brainstorming Techniques

Online Brainwriting
Using one person’s ideas as inspiration for the next person is
a great way to get over that ‘blank page’ problem. Brainwriting
generates lots of ideas quickly—and since it starts with
solo work, it suits all kinds of people (not just those who
feel comfortable speaking up in meetings).
Designer
Tip: Try asynchronous – You don’t all have to be together
for a great brainwriting exercise. Pass the baton across
time zones and regroup in a few days, avoiding video
conference fatigue. Pressure is off to keep your video Writer
on all the time. (An antidote to Zoom fatigue!)

How to do it:

■ Give everyone their own area of the whiteboard.

■ S
 tart the timer—for, say, 4 minutes—and ask each person
to write as many ideas as possible in response to the question.
■ W
 hen the time is up, each person passes their ideas to the
next person, who gets 4 more minutes to respond, expand, Product Manager
explore and add new ideas to.
■ R
 eview as a group, using Freehand and your chosen video
meeting platform.

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 5 Online Brainstorming Techniques

“5 Whys” Online Designer

5 Whys came out of lean manufacturing and kanban
methodologies but has swept out across every other
discipline and market. Why? Because it’s so simple and
so powerful. A great way to get a whole team to get creative
about everything from root causes to customer needs.
How to do it:
Tip: The Fishbone Diagram – If you’re looking to
brainstorm around the root causes of a problem or
incident, the Ishikawa or Fishbone Diagram can help.
Use it to brainstorm possible causes by type of cause
(People, Process, Equipment, etc). Create a blank
fishbone in Freehand, invite the team and you’re off.

■ Open a blank or prepared Freehand.

■ P
 ut the problem or question at the top. (Could be anything:
“No one knows what we do” or “Users aren’t progressing
from freemium to paid.”)
■ Spend 5 minutes together generating answers to Why. Developer
■ P
 ick one of the group’s favorite answers and, again,
ask “Why?”.
■ Repeat three more times.
■ D
 iscuss all the ideas generated and capture themes
in a separate area of the whiteboard.

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 5 Online Brainstorming Techniques

Writer
Step-Ladder Brainstorming
The Step-Ladder technique encourages people to share ideas A study by the Journal of Applied Psychology found
without being overly influenced by others. It’s a good way to that a decision made using the stepladder technique
add energy and momentum to an online brainstorming session. surpassed the quality of their best individual members’
decisions 56% of the time. In contrast, conventional
How to do it: group decisions surpassed the quality of their best
members’ decisions only 13% of the time.
■ B
 efore the session, share the problem and give people time
to think about it.
■ Invite the first two participants to the Freehand, asking
them to brainstorm ideas and capture them with virtual
sticky notes on the whiteboard.
■ A
 fter a set time (5-10 minutes), add a third participant. The
new person shares their own ideas with the original pair
before hearing their ideas. They then discuss, adding and
organizing the stickies.
■ Keep adding people, one at a time until everyone has joined.
Product Manager
■ Discuss and prioritize!

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 5 Online Brainstorming Techniques

Card (sticky-note) sorting

Most brainstorm sessions generate a lot of ideas—that’s what
they’re for. But it’s not always obvious what to do next. Card
sorting can be a starter exercise on its own (using pre-made
stickies or filling them in as a group) but the technique really
shines when you’ve got a whole lot of stickies and aren’t sure
how they relate to each other.
KPMG Digital Village helps companies transform
through innovation. They use Card Sorting to gather
perspectives, explore new approaches and identify
themes. Check out their Card Sorting Freehand
template here—it’s for information architecture
exercises but is easily adapted for anything.

How to do it:

■ S
 pread out all the sticky-note ideas generated in a
previous round.
■ T
 he facilitator or a participant starts reading them out loud,
working as a group to sort them into clusters or categories.
■ D
 iscuss the ideas, themes, issues and relationships that
the clustering reveals.
■ P
 rioritize and break out into teams to process each chosen
category a bit further. (This is getting good).

Designer

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About InVision
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About Freehand
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because they can start using it with zero training.
It integrates with your other collaborative and
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Hop in and see how Freehand can help you
reduce innovation friction and get ideas flowing.