5 UX-Inspired Habits That Will Supercharge Your Next Brainstorm
The best brainstorms aren’t accidents. They’re experiences designed with intention.
We’ve compiled 5 UX-inspired habits—rooted in behavioral science—that can help you transform your next brainstorm from a chaotic idea dump into a focused, inclusive, and energizing session.
1. Start with research: understand who’s in the room
Arguably the most important step in the UX process, research allows a designer to focus in on their end goal. Before you gather people around a whiteboard, get curious about their context. What motivates them? What’s worked for them in past meetings and what hasn’t? A quick pre-meeting pulse check can uncover hidden patterns, expectations, and frustrations.
By uncovering these insights, you will start to get a sense of general attitudes and expectations which you can then translate into personas.
2. Create personas to balance the room
In UX, personas help us humanize data. In brainstorms, they can help us navigate dynamics.
Look at the extremes that exist in attendees and try to combine them to make two different personas. Personas allow a designer to see shared goals across demographics and attach a human importance to finding the right solution. Consider ways to even out any power dynamics that would derail the meeting and find out what your personas may share with each other.
3. Use ideation to quiet the noise
Similar to how UX designers use wireframes and lo-fi sketches as a launching pad towards a final design, putting pen to paper in your next meeting helps solidify goals and introduce novel solutions. Our team utilizes the Brainwriting technique, where everyone writes ideas silently before any group discussion. This gives introverts a fair shot, prevents early anchoring on dominant voices, and promotes diversity of thought. Writing also activates different neural pathways than speaking—often unlocking more creative, surprising solutions.
4. Collaborate to improve, not just approve
Refinement is a skill we use in UX that can clear any brainstorm clutter. Use the latter part of your meeting to perform a similar tactic. Pass sketches out randomly and challenge the attendees to expand on or challenge the idea written on the paper. Next, find duplicate ideas. Discard the weaker option or combine the duplicates into something new. Now is the time to remove any distracting or unrealistic ideas that will hinder the goal of the meeting. Now that the ideas are gleaned out, the attendees can choose their favorites. The most popular ideas get pushed forward, while others are tabled for another day. Users appreciate touches of personalization. Add in small details that will strengthen the most popular ideas.
5. Reflect and iterate on the process
Just like websites, your meetings can and should improve over time. Build in reflection time: what worked, what felt flat, who didn’t get a chance to contribute? Treat each session like a prototype. Capture outcomes, gather feedback, and iterate on the structure for next time. Behavioral science shows that when teams reflect on how they collaborate they tend to generate more creative, high-quality outcomes over time.
Once you’re done brainstorming, try applying these five phases of UX to other areas of your work life, and treat yourself to a coffee.