The 3 Pillars of Good Ideation

Have you ever gotten stuck in an ideation session when trying to come up with new ideas? The blank page can be quite daunting, but the common advice is to push through because quantity equals quality. But quantity on it's own is not enough.

The second key element of ideation is flexibility. When tasked with coming up with lots of ideas people can get into a rut and just do minor variations on the same theme. Flexibility is all about variation. There are structured techniques you can use to help people break out of a single narrow viewpoint and deliver a wider range of creative ideas.

Finally, Orginality is about bringing the customer back into focus for all of the ideas ensure that the ideas solves the original problem, just in a unique way. I dig into these in more detail in my article below.

This Week’s Updates

Enabling the Team

The Growth Path No One Can Take Away by MaJen Dionisio
Personal and professional growth is a continuous journey that no one can take away from you. Embrace challenges, learn from experiences, and consistently seek improvement to achieve lasting success.

From Overwhelmed To Ownership: My Self-Management Journey by Emma de Blok
Emma's journey from feeling overwhelmed to embracing ownership within a self-managed organization. While structures and processes are essential, the most significant shift comes from changing mindsets and behaviors.

Product Direction

Precise Forecasting With Cohort Analysis by Leonid Malysh
Segment users based on their start month, allows for more accurate predictions of user retention and revenue growth, helping strategic planning and resource allocation.

Why Generalists Make Great Product Managers by Ant Murphy
Generalists bring adaptability and broad knowledge, making them effective in product roles where cross-functional collaboration is essential.

Continuous Research

Beyond The Research Repository by Emily DiLeo
By delivering UX research findings directly to decision-makers, integrating them into business strategies and product development you can drive user-centered outcomes.

AI in UX Analytics: The Data You Need to Make User-Centric Choices by Krish Arora
By integrating AI-driven automations into the research and analysis stage, designers can understand a user group’s attitudes, behaviors, motivations and frustrations at scale. In turn, they can create more intuitive and responsive digital products. [Sponsored Content]

Continuous Design

The 3 Pillars of Good Ideation—Fluency, Flexibility, and Originality by Rory Madden
Fluency, flexibility, and originality are not isolated elements: they work in tandem to create a robust ideation process. Start with quantity, embrace variety, and focus on impactful solutions. 

Aligning User Experience With Customer Success For Better Retention by Mehdi Hussen
Aligning UX with CS is essential for improving user retention. Personalizing user experiences based on customer data, proactively identifying and addressing user pain points, and fostering a collaboration culture between UX and CS teams creates a seamless experience at every touchpoint.

Continuous Development

A Large Project, Broken Up by Jens Rantil
A method for breaking down large projects into smaller, incremental deliveries. Defining clear goals, breaking down tasks, and maintaining regular communication among teams led to the successful, on-time delivery of several projects.

Five Years Of React Native At Shopify (2025) by Mustafa Ali
Shopify's 5-year journey with React Native boosted productivity, enabling efficient cross-platform development and faster feature delivery with improved performance.

UXDX EMEA 2025 New Workshop:
How to Practice Cross-discipline Collaboration
to Build Seamless User Experiences

Join Josh Kimmell, Principal Designer at IBM, for a hands-on workshop at UXDX EMEA 2025 in Berlin. Learn how to design modular user experiences that prioritize seamless workflows and break down silos between teams.

Josh will share how aligning around the "Jobs to Be Done" framework can improve collaboration and enhance user satisfaction. Through engaging activities, including the use of red yarn (!), you will identify opportunities to bridge platform gaps and create actionable strategies for cross-product interoperability.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from one of IBM’s top designers. Sign up now for this valuable workshop!

THE UXDX MAJOR EVENTS

FREE COMMUNITY EVENTS 

Check out more upcoming community events 

Video of the Week
Navigating Project Buy-in in Large Enterprise Ecosystems

Kelle Link shares her strategies for rolling out Program Management processes at Verizon Connect while integrating design thinking into broader strategic initiatives. She shares how she secures buy-in from key stakeholders and ensures projects resonate powerfully across departments. Kelle’s approach blends theory with her extensive experience, offering actionable strategies that can be applied at any organizational level.

If you’re looking to elevate your projects and drive cross-functional collaboration, check out the full video here 👇

The Results of Last Week’s Poll

The question: Do you create a research plan before you start doing research?

The best result in this survey is that nobody selected “We Don’t Do Research”. It seems like planning is pretty embedded with 94.9% of respondents saying they always or mostly create a research plan before starting their research.

However, 5.1% of respondents don’t create a plan, which might be contributing to inefficiencies or challenges in ensuring research outcomes are actionable and measurable. A structured approach to research planning is a key factor in driving impactful results so it might be worth considering how planning could enhance the clarity and direction of your research.

If you’re looking for tips on how to create effective research plans, check out our course on Continuous Research for more strategies!