Gamestorming
6-3-5 Brainwriting
This is a silent brainstorming exercise. Participants build on each other's ideas in structured rounds. Six people generate three ideas in five minutes, then pass their sheet to a neighbor. This structured iteration yields 108 ideas in 30 minutes.
Duration
30 mins
Group Size
4-6
Category
Gamestorming
Difficulty
Easy
The goals are to generate many ideas through silent iteration, give quieter team members a voice, systematically build on ideas, and foster collaborative ideation without groupthink.
- Completed 6-3-5 brainwriting exercise.
- Systematic idea generation process.
- A diverse set of ideas.
Silence is critical for this exercise. It benefits introverts and prevents vocal participants from dominating the session. Enforce the time limits strictly. If the group has fewer or more than six people, adjust the format (e.g., 4-4-5: 4 people, 4 ideas, 5 minutes). Encourage participants to build on previous ideas, not just add random ones. The quality of ideas may dip in the middle rounds as novelty decreases. That's normal. Some of the best ideas come from combining elements across different rounds. This works well for product feature ideation or solving specific design challenges. Follow up with dot voting to identify the top concepts.
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