Solve the opposite problem
Turn the situation upside-down and generate ideas for the new, opposite situation. This is a very powerful and fun method.
Process:
- Present the challenge (e.g. “Create a new shopping cart”).
- Reformulate the challenge in the negative (“Create the worst possible shopping cart”).
- Generate ideas to the negative problem: don’t be afraid to generate too many, or to think of even the most ridiculous ones.
- Transform these ideas to the positive. Don’t just do this translation idea-by-idea, but see if you can combine many negative ideas to generate a single positive solution to the challenge.