Bad Ideas

The “Bad Ideas” approach tackles two big problems in brainstorming: fear of judgment and creative blocks. When teams feel pressured to only share good or smart ideas, they often hold back because of performance anxiety. That fear kills creativity. By encouraging bad ideas, teams lower the stakes and open the floor to wild thinking.

This method also shakes up groupthink and helps individuals splinter off to find their own treasures. Teams often fall into familiar patterns or stick too close to what’s already known. Purposefully bad ideas challenge those norms and push people to explore unusual paths that can take them to valuable viewpoints and angles of the real problem. These “bad” ideas often reveal hidden assumptions or lead to surprisingly great insights.

IDEO and other innovation leaders swear by this method for loosening up minds and building a strong creative momentum.

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Silly or absurd—or downright “bad”—ideas often lead to original thinking because they push the brain out of autopilot. When you step away from logic and expectations, you can unlock new mental pathways. Absurd or bad ideas challenge assumptions and force teams to look at problems in unexpected ways—and access ideas that conventional thinking would “forbid.”

This works because creativity thrives on surprise. Absurdity disrupts the usual thought patterns and encourages risk-taking, flying in the face of convention and its norms and rules about not being “silly.” Teams stop filtering themselves and start exploring “what if” questions without limits.

A classic example is Google’s “20% time,” which lets employees explore wild ideas—Gmail started as a “silly” side project.

Watch as Author and Human-Computer Interaction Expert, Professor Alan Dix explains bad ideas and what you can do with them:

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Use the “Bad Ideas” method early in the design process, especially during ideation and when your team feels stuck. For example, in design thinking, design teams use it during the third phase of the process, when they ideate. Bad ideas as a technique work best when you want to loosen up thinking, break mental ruts, or kick-start creativity before refining concepts.

Right after research and problem framing, this is the moment to go wide and wild with ideas. Tossing out “bad” ones helps teams move past safe or obvious solutions. It sets the tone for experimentation and makes everyone feel safe to contribute. Judgments are left at the door for the time being.

This method also comes in handy when your brainstorming feels stale or dominated by the same voices. Absurd ideas shift energy and open surprising paths—and the fun factor can encourage even the quietest personalities to chime in with beautifully bold and ludicrous ideas that can carry the team towards a better destination, ideas-wise.

Watch as Author and Human-Computer Interaction Expert, Professor Alan Dix explains bad ideas and what you can do with them:

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Here’s a suggestion for how to run a “Bad Ideas” session step-by-step:

1. Set the tone—Start by telling the team the goal is to imagine the worst, most ridiculous ideas possible. Make it clear that this is about fun, not perfection.

2. Frame the challenge—Clearly define the design problem or question you want to explore. Keep it focused but open-ended.

3. Warm up—Use a silly prompt (e.g., “How would a toddler solve this?”) to get everyone laughing, relaxed, and into the spirit of the exercise.

4. Generate bad ideas—Set a timer for 10–15 minutes. Encourage wild, impractical, or outrageous ideas. Don’t stop to evaluate; go for quantity.

5. Share and build—Encourage each person to share their worst ideas. Then, remix or build on them together. Sometimes, absurd ideas spark something unexpectedly brilliant. The team will notice the value of what at first may have seemed laughably pointless.

6. Debrief—Wrap up by reflecting on which ideas have potential if reframed. Capture anything worth exploring further.

Watch as Author and Human-Computer Interaction Expert, Professor Alan Dix explains bad ideas and what you can do with them:

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Good bad ideas are so outrageous or impractical that they push creative boundaries and bulldoze walls of judgment that conventional wisdom or assumptions have built. That’s what makes them valuable. For example:

• “Let’s solve traffic by putting cities on stilts.” It’s absurd and pointlessly impracticable (at least with current technological and resource constraints), but it opens thinking around vertical design, layered infrastructure, or flying transport.

• “What if our app only worked on Tuesdays?” It sounds useless (who would love a brand that could only deliver one seventh of the time, after all), but it sparks ideas about exclusivity, scarcity, or user rituals.

• “Make a chair that disintegrates after you sit too long.” It’s wild and—yes—dangerously irresponsible if someone were to actually design one. However, it still prompts thinking around ergonomics, movement, or preventing sedentary behavior.

These ideas seem ridiculous at first. Notions that would get the contributor laughed off the stage (or lectern, podium, or front table at a meeting), but they help teams let go of limitations and explore fresh angles. Often, a great solution hides behind a joke; many a true word is said in jest.

Watch as Author and Human-Computer Interaction Expert, Professor Alan Dix explains bad ideas and what you can do with them:

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A “Bad Ideas” exercise should last around 10 to 20 minutes. That short window keeps energy high and stops overthinking. You want just enough time for wild ideas to flow and emerge nice and raw and absurd, but not so much that the team starts filtering themselves or losing momentum.

Start with a quick 5-minute warm-up. Then, dive into a 10-minute rapid-fire round of bad idea generation. If the team feels energized, extend it another 5 minutes or do a second round with a twist—like remixing the worst ideas into new ones and seeing where that goes.

This format works well in workshops, sprints, or team huddles. Think of it as a creative jolt where the energy comes in creative spurts. It shouldn’t be a marathon where ideas plod in many directions. In longer sessions, people might have time to accidentally edit the “badness” out of their otherwise useful bad ideas.

Watch as Author and Human-Computer Interaction Expert, Professor Alan Dix explains bad ideas and what you can do with them:

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To make a “Bad Ideas” activity feel fun—but not like a joke (which is a risk with this kind of activity)—set the right tone from the start. Tell the team this is a serious creativity tool disguised as play but focus more on the fun factor and that there’s a method to the madness. Be careful not to make a bad ideas session sound like a trick or a conventional ideation approach in disguise. That might undo the trust and lowered barriers you want for the best results. Emphasize that absurd ideas help uncover surprising insights and unlock better thinking, so everyone can be as wild as they want.

Create a safe space by encouraging laughter and letting go of judgment, but keep focus. Set a clear challenge, use a timer, and treat the process with intention. When the time’s up, look back at the “bad” ideas together and ask, “What hidden gem can we build on?”

Use music, sticky notes, or sketching to keep energy high. Celebrate wild thinking with humor and light-heartedness, but always reconnect the ideas to the core problem.

Watch as Author and Human-Computer Interaction Expert, Professor Alan Dix explains bad ideas and what you can do with them:

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Dig beneath the joke and find the insight to turn a bad idea into a useful one. Ask: What problem does this idea highlight? What’s the core need or twist hiding inside it? Then reframe it in a way that makes it practical.

Start by breaking down the absurd idea. For example, “What if we made shoes that scream when they get wet?” may sound useless, but it hints at a real need: keeping feet dry. That could lead to smart moisture-alert tech for shoes.

Next, use “Yes, and…” thinking. Don’t shoot ideas down—instead, build on them. Shift focus from what's wrong to what could work. A ridiculous idea often sparks an innovative feature, experience, or strategy—hence the purpose of the activity.

Watch as Author and Human-Computer Interaction Expert, Professor Alan Dix explains bad ideas and what you can do with them:

Take our course Creativity: Methods to Design Better Products and Services.

Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2013). Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. MIT Press.

Speculative Everything by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby is a seminal work that redefines the purpose of design beyond commercial and utilitarian objectives. The authors introduce speculative design to explore alternative futures, using fictional and sometimes intentionally “bad” or provocative ideas to challenge the status quo. This approach encourages designers to think critically and creatively, using design as a tool for asking questions rather than offering solutions. The book has been particularly influential in academia and future-focused design practices, providing a framework for using imagination and storytelling to address social, political, and environmental issues in design thinking.

Dix, A., Ormerod, T., Twidale, M. B., Sas, C., Gomes da Silva, P. A., & McKnight, L. (2006). Why bad ideas are a good idea [Conference paper]. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

This conference paper introduces the "Bad Ideas" methodology, which leverages intentionally flawed or absurd ideas to stimulate creativity and critical thinking in interaction design. Using deliberately “bad” ideas, designers and students can challenge assumptions, explore unexpected avenues, and break free from design fixation. The paper outlines the technique’s rationale, practice, and pedagogical applications in fostering lateral thinking. The authors provide theoretical background and anecdotal evidence, making this a valuable contribution to creative design education. The approach stands out for its playful, subversive twist on traditional brainstorming and practical use in UX and HCI learning environments.

Silva, P. A., & Read, J. C. (2010). A methodology to evaluate creative design methods: A study with the Bad Ideas method. In Proceedings of the 22nd Conference of the Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group of Australia on Computer-Human Interaction (pp. 264–271). ACM.

This paper presents a methodology for evaluating creative design methods, focusing on the Bad Ideas method. The authors conducted a study to assess the effectiveness of this approach in fostering creativity during the design process. Findings indicate that the Bad Ideas method encourages divergent thinking and helps designers explore a broader range of solutions by intentionally considering flawed concepts. The study also examines the role of facilitation in the process, concluding that while facilitation can enhance participant engagement, the method remains effective even without it. This research is significant as it provides a structured framework for evaluating creative methods and highlights the value of embracing unconventional ideas in design.

Birsel, A. (2017, August 16). To come up with a good idea, start by imagining the worst idea possible. Harvard Business Review.

In this article, Ayse Birsel explores the concept of "wrong thinking,” a creative technique where designers begin by intentionally generating the worst ideas imaginable. This counterintuitive approach is rooted in reverse thinking, helping to bypass conventional assumptions and trigger novel insights. Birsel explains how reframing problems by considering absurd or unfeasible ideas can lead to genuine innovation, especially in high-stakes design environments. Drawing from her experience with leading global brands, she demonstrates the method’s practical use in unlocking creativity. The article is significant for its accessible yet strategic take on design ideation, offering a useful tactic for UX designers, educators, and innovation teams.