Good and bad ideas

It is difficult to know let alone predict why some design ideas succeed while others fail. This is because design ideas represent proposals, or work in progress, rather than final plans, artefacts or systems. And so there's a gap between ideas and their realisation, which can be considerable. Ideation, then, focuses on process, rather than final outcome.

Ideation and sense-making

The notion of sense-making, or individuals experience when attempting to make sense of observed data, as explored in interdisciplinary research programmes, may be helpful in making sense of ideas too, particularly in the communication phase of ideation when people and ideas interact, and both at individual and organisational levels. Sense-making, then, as applied to ideation where ideas become observed data, can be seen as a two-way process of fitting ideas into situations, or contexts, where neither idea nor context comes first; ideas bring out contexts and contexts generate ideas. And when the idea gives rise to uncertainty or ambiguity, or when there is no satisfactory fit between idea and context, the idea may be reconsidered or an existing context may be revised. Thus in applying sense-making to ideation, in fitting ideas with contexts, may not only promote better understanding of the connections between people, ideas and situations but also anticipate acceptance, accommodation or assimilation of ideas.