10/18/21, 10:01 PM Random Association: using your brain’s associative powers to ideate faster | by Ibrahim Khan | UX Collective

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Random Association: using your brain’s

associative powers to ideate faster
Ibrahim Khan Oct 6, 2020 · 4 min read

My workplace would have a weekly design workshop when we were still going to the
office. The goal of the workshop was to allow complete freedom in experimenting with
and trying different techniques in the design process (it could be research methods,
ideation techniques, prototyping methods and so on), or if anyone wanted to share
some cool insights on their work, they could do that too.

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And then COVID happened. Now, as these days go by, my colleagues and I have
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become accustomed to the virtual ways of our new reality, and we’ve found a very
comfortable home in using Miro as our “official” collaboration tool for these
workshops.

Anyway, last week’s activity was about a very simple, yet effective way, of coming up
with ideas: Random Association. The inspiration behind this was utilizing the brain’s
power of association and retention to create new connections, no matter how different
two concepts might be from each other.

How? As usual, we start with a problem that we’re looking to solve, or a set of
problems in our case:

Our problem set, including our votes

Each person had one vote, and the problem statement with the most votes was
selected.

HMW work fewer hours, without losing productivity?

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Picking A Word
It’s very simple. You pick a completely random word, with no connection to the
problem statement. We opened Donald Trump’s official Twitter account and picked the
first word with more than five letters: “intelligent”. Now, think of as many things as you
can that you associate with this word. This part is interesting because your mind allows
you to break down the word into its characteristics. Which context do you use it in?
Does it have an opposite? Any cultural connections? And so on.

Write down as many associated ideas as possible, and you will end up with a word
vomit similar to this:

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10/18/21, 10:01 PM Random Association: using your brain’s associative powers to ideate faster | by Ibrahim Khan | UX Collective

Word associations
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Creating Connections
Now that you have all these words, you could either go through the entire list, or you
could pick 3–4 random words, like we did. The purpose of this is to force your brain to
create connections between these words and your problem statement. And what we
did the previous step, breaking the word into its characteristics, can help us in creating
these connections.

Creating connections (1)

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10/18/21, 10:01 PM Random Association: using your brain’s associative powers to ideate faster | by Ibrahim Khan | UX Collective

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Creating connections (2)

Write down your ideas, as many as you can come up with. It doesn’t matter if the
majority of your ideas don’t seem to make sense, all it takes is one valuable idea to
make it worth the time you’re investing. At the end, you’re probably not going to use
most of the ideas or connections you come up with, but you also can’t know
beforehand which line of thought will lead to that one breakthrough idea.

Collated ideas

Collate the ideas onto one board, and narrow down to those that fit your problem
statement.

The point of this entire activity was to acquaint us with a very simple, yet effective,
ideation technique which utilizes our knowledge and memory in a dirtier, yet faster,
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10/18/21, 10:01 PM Random Association: using your brain’s associative powers to ideate faster | by Ibrahim Khan | UX Collective

way. Our brain creates associations on the fly, using knowledge that is available in the
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world, and combining it with the knowledge in our head, thereby opening up the
possibility for new ideas and concepts.

My Takeaway: I try to notice how my brain reacts to my surroundings when I’m in any
setting (Yes, I’ve been told I zone out sometimes). Can I sense when an association is
made? What if I cultivate this skill enough so that it may serve in any context, and not
just in a brainstorming situation? That would be a useful thing to have.

The UX Collective donates US$1 for each article published in our platform. This story contributed to Bay
Area Black Designers: a professional development community for Black people who are digital designers
and researchers in the San Francisco Bay Area. By joining together in community, members share
inspiration, connection, peer mentorship, professional development, resources, feedback, support, and
resilience. Silence against systemic racism is not an option. Build the design community you believe in.

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