Product 2016
Wall Of Ideas
A rapid-fire trigger-question sprint that floods a wall with sticky notes fast.
What it is
Twenty to forty trigger questions fired at roughly 30-second intervals, with participants racing to slap up as many ideas as they can before the next one lands. Once the wall is full, ideas get clustered into themes, off-topic ones move to a Parking Lot, and a final pass catches anything overlooked.
Reach for it when
- A session that has stalled and needs a jolt of raw material
- Early ideation before a team is ready to narrow anything down
- A workshop that keeps producing the same three ideas because no one is asking new questions
Running it
- Write 20-40 trigger questions ahead of time, angled at different facets of the challenge.
- Fire one question every ~30 seconds; everyone writes and slaps up notes as fast as they can, no pausing for discussion.
- Once the wall is full, cluster matching notes together and route anything off-topic to a Parking Lot instead of binning it.
- Do a final sweep of the whole wall before closing, specifically to catch notes nobody grouped.
Watch out: Generic trigger questions written in a hurry produce repetitive ideas, and clustering mid-flow instead of after the wall fills kills the pace the format depends on.
Add unlimited notes to any activity
Comments & Discussion
Add a Comment
Recent Comments (3)
This workshop was incredibly effective for our remote team! We adapted it slightly for a virtual setting and it worked wonderfully. The key was breaking into smaller breakout rooms.
Great resource! One tip: prepare all materials the day before to avoid any last-minute rushes.
Used this for our quarterly planning session. The structured approach really helped us stay on track!