12 decks of cards for brainstorming, design sprints & hackathons

INTRODUCING METHODKIT WITH …

The kits are analog tools designed to help you ideate, brainstorm and explore new ideas. Each kit is a collection of building blocks such as technologies, business models, trends, human needs and channels. Combine them, mix and match or mash them up to help you solve (big and small) challenges, create new ideas, or improve existing ones.

Brainstorming and design thinking methods used in workshops, hackathons and design sprints often start with a stack of post-its and an empty wall. This approach can easily become quite unstructured and ad-hoc. By having the building blocks in your hands right from the start, you can instead focus on the act of combining them or finding ones that can improve your ideas, without having to come up with everything from scratch.

Example: A startup combine cards from with Trends, Human Needs and Technologies to come up with a new hardware device concepts to complement their existing app.

Strengths of MethodKit

Rapid Ideation

Use them to generate ideas quickly. Explore, ideate and keep moving forward. The kits help you to explore and develop ideas, while keeping you in the sweet spot between structure and chaos.

Building blocks

Use them to consider all existing pieces. Don’t start from scratch. The kits provide you with an overview of possibilities – a kit of parts. Having this in your hands from the start means you can focus on what’s important – generating, exploring and testing ideas.

Mashups

Use them to create & combine. Use a single kit by itself to explore possibilities within one field, or mashup multiple kits together for interdisciplinary and multilayered ideation.

Ways to use

Below are three examples of how the cards can be used. Explore How to use for many more examples.

Come up with many ideas with one building block as a trigger.

Use them to improve existing ideas.

Use Game boards to work through every card in the deck in an effective way.

How might we…

The cards let you explore new ways of solving challenges. By starting each sentence with How might we … (or What if…) you are able to maintain focus on generating new ideas and possibilities directly linked to the question. The cards help you to narrow and change the scope of exploration continuously.

Example: “How might we improve the local square by making something…