How to Ideate in Design Thinking: What Works, What's Overhyped, and What's Changing

Let’s be real — if you’re not Google or IBM, you probably don’t have the time (or budget) for week-long workshops with sticky notes covering every inch of wall space. Most articles glorify Ideation like it’s some magical process, but for small and mid-sized SaaS teams, that’s just not the reality.

The good news? You don’t need a massive budget or a PhD in creativity to come up with groundbreaking ideas. In this guide, we’ll break down:

• What actually works when you ideate in design thinking
• What’s totally overhyped
• How AI is changing the game

At Eleken, a UI/UX agency for SaaS startups, we’ve worked with dozens of companies who needed fresh, innovative solutions. We don’t waste time on theoretical fluff — we focus on what actually delivers results. 

So, based on our experience, we'll break down what works in design thinking ideation for small and mid-size SaaS companies, let’s dive in!

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What is ideation in design thinking?

Ideation in design thinking is the process of generating a wide range of ideas to solve a problem. 

That was a brief definition, but if you're new to the concept, it's best to first explore the term “Design Thinking” and then see where ideation fits in.

What design thinking actually is?

Design Thinking is a problem-solving framework that helps teams create user-centered solutions by iterating quickly and thinking beyond obvious ideas. 

In simple words? It's a way to solve problems that puts users first. It helps teams come up with better solutions by testing ideas quickly and looking past the obvious answers that everyone thinks of first.

P.S. We’ve got an in-depth guide on What is Design Thinking that covers all the fundamentals.

What are the 5 stages of design thinking?

At its core, Design Thinking consists of five stages:

1. Empathize - Understanding your users' needs
2. Define - Pinpointing the actual problem
3. Ideate - Generating creative solutions
4. Prototype - Building quick, testable versions
5. Test - Getting feedback from real users

The Ideate phase is where the creative magic happens. It's the bridge between understanding problems and creating solutions. If you want to see how teams apply these stages in real life, check out these Design Thinking Examples.

But here's something most articles won't tell you: Design Thinking isn't a linear process. In real-world projects, teams jump back and forth between these stages all the time. And you definitely don't need to use all five stages for every single project.

Why ideation is the heart of Design Thinking

Ideation is where you finally get to break out of predictable thinking patterns. After spending time understanding your users and defining the problem, ideation gives you permission to explore wild possibilities before committing to a solution.

But there's a common misconception we need to clear up: good ideation isn't just about coming up with random ideas. It's about breaking out of predictable thinking patterns to find truly valuable solutions.

Here’s why it’s crucial:

• It helps break mental barriers. When you force yourself (or your team) to keep going after the first five or ten ideas, you start finding unexpected and innovative solutions.
• It encourages collaboration. Ideation works best when multiple perspectives come into play.
• It prevents teams from jumping straight into execution mode. Too often, teams go with the first good idea instead of exploring better alternatives.

The truth is, if you're rushing through ideation or skipping it entirely, you're probably building a solution that's just "good enough" rather than truly innovative. And in today's market, "good enough" doesn't cut it anymore.

To sum up: Design Thinking is a flexible problem-solving toolkit — not a rigid process. The ideation stage is where real breakthroughs happen, but only if you push beyond your first few obvious ideas.

Now that we understand what ideation is and why it matters, let's talk about the biggest roadblock teams face when trying to generate breakthrough ideas.

The #1 problem in ideation: getting stuck in "obvious" ideas

Ever been in a brainstorming session where everyone gets excited about the first few ideas and then.. crickets? Yeah, we know the feeling. The biggest hurdle in ideation isn't starting — it's pushing past those first "obvious" solutions that everyone thinks of.

Common pain points from designers

We recently chatted with several Eleken product designers about their biggest ideation challenges. Nearly all of them mentioned the same issue: most teams stop at the first 5-10 ideas, which are usually the most obvious and unoriginal options.

Why? Because those first ideas feel good. They're logical. They make sense. And that's exactly the problem.

The truth is, your first ideas are usually the same ones your competitors have already thought of. They're the solutions sitting at the surface, waiting to be plucked like low-hanging fruit. The real innovation happens when you push past that initial comfort zone.

Here's what typically happens in an ideation session:

• Ideas 1-5: The obvious solutions anyone in your industry would think of
• Ideas 6-15: Slightly more interesting variations on those obvious solutions
• Ideas 16-30: Where things start getting weird (in a good way)
• Ideas 31+: The goldmine of unexpected, potentially groundbreaking concepts

But most teams never make it past that first batch because of some powerful psychological barriers:

• Fear of judgment: "What if my idea sounds stupid?"
• Mental fatigue: "Coming up with new ideas is hard, let's just pick one of these."
• Solution attachment: "I really like my first idea, so I'll just keep defending it."
• Time pressure: "We need to move on to implementation, we don't have time for more ideas!"

Try the "Bad Idea" challenge

So how do you break through this barrier? One technique we've found incredibly effective at Eleken is what we call the "Bad Idea Challenge."

Here's how it works:

1. Set a timer for 10 minutes
2. Challenge everyone to come up with the worst possible solutions to your problem
3. Aim for truly terrible, ridiculous, or even impossible ideas
4. When time's up, go through each bad idea and ask: "What makes this bad?"
5. Then flip it: "How could we transform this bad quality into something useful?"

This technique works because it removes the pressure of coming up with "good" ideas. It frees your team to think differently and often leads to surprising insights.

And if you’re looking for more structured methods beyond the “Bad Idea” challenge, here’s a list of Design Thinking Ideation Techniques that we often use at Eleken.

A real-world ideation example from our work

Last year, we worked with PayUp – a money app that helps workers get paid faster instead of waiting 30 days for their money. They wanted to make their app better and add new features while growing their business. 

When trying to create a way for users to make bills inside the app, we ran into problems. PayUp wanted to make a complex task simple by putting everything on one screen, but our first ideas were either too messy or too hard for people who aren't tech experts.

We got stuck until we tried something different. During one of our team drawing sessions, we asked a crazy question: "What if we got rid of regular forms completely?" This odd idea got us talking about splitting information into small, fold-out sections.

What did we end up making? We created little cards that users could open one by one to fill in their information – this kept things simple while still keeping everything on one page. Users loved this unusual approach, and it became one of the most popular parts of the new app.

The takeaway? Pushing past the first wave of ideas leads to real innovation. Use techniques like the "Bad Idea Challenge" to break through psychological barriers and discover truly original solutions.

Now, let's talk about why traditional brainstorming often fails to deliver breakthroughs and what to do instead.

Why brainstorming is overrated (and what to do instead)

Admit it — you've been in brainstorming sessions that felt more like a waste of time than an innovation engine. You're not imagining things. Traditional brainstorming, despite being the poster child of ideation, has some serious flaws.

The problem with traditional brainstorming

The concept of getting everyone in a room to shout out ideas sounds great in theory. But in practice? It's often a mess:

1. The loudest voices dominate

In most brainstorming sessions, 2-3 people do 80% of the talking. Usually, it's the most senior people or the most extroverted. What about all those brilliant ideas locked in the heads of your quieter team members?

2. The pressure to sound smart

When we brainstorm in groups, we unconsciously filter our ideas. We want to impress our colleagues, not make them question our competence. So, we hold back the weird, potentially groundbreaking thoughts.

3. The first idea anchoring

Once someone throws out an idea, it creates an "anchor" that influences all subsequent thinking. This is why so many brainstorming sessions end up exploring variations of the first suggestion rather than truly diverse concepts.

One UX designer described brainstorming sessions as "performance theater where everyone tries to look creative rather than actually being creative." Ouch.

It’s no surprise that traditional brainstorming often leads to groupthink and recycled ideas. The good news? There are far more effective brainstorming strategies out there — ones that encourage original thinking and help teams break out of the obvious.

3 alternative ideation methods that actually work

So if traditional brainstorming is so flawed, what should you do instead? Here are three approaches we've found far more effective at Eleken:

1. AI-powered brainstorming

AI tools like ChatGPT, Miro AI, or Notion AI can generate dozens of starting points in seconds. Instead of starting from scratch, try:

• Asking an AI to generate 20 possible solutions to your problem
• Having each team member select 2-3 concepts that intrigue them
• Using those AI-generated ideas as starting points for deeper exploration

This approach provides a much wider range of initial concepts and removes the social pressure of generating the first ideas.

2. Speculative design

What if everyone in the world suddenly had an extra arm? How would you redesign a smartphone for them?

Speculative design forces your team to think in entirely new contexts, which bypasses conventional thinking. Here's how to use it:

1. Create an imaginary scenario that changes a fundamental assumption about your users or their environment
2. Challenge your team to design solutions within this new reality
3. Extract the core principles from these imaginary solutions
4. Apply those principles to your actual problem

This technique is particularly powerful for breaking out of industry conventions that everyone takes for granted.

3. TRIZ method (The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving)

Originally developed for engineering challenges, TRIZ is based on a simple insight: most problems have already been solved in some other field.

The process works like this:

1. Identify the core contradiction in your problem (e.g., "We want our app to be both simple AND feature-rich")
2. Look for solutions to similar contradictions in completely unrelated industries
3. Adapt those solutions to your specific context

So, ditch generic brainstorming. Instead, use AI-powered brainstorming to generate diverse starting points, speculative design to break industry conventions, and TRIZ to find solutions from unrelated fields.

But there's an even bigger shift happening in ideation methods right now — and it's all driven by advances in AI. Let's explore how artificial intelligence is fundamentally changing the game for design thinking.

The AI shift: how AI is reshaping ideation in design thinking

If you've been paying attention to the design world lately, you know that AI is fundamentally changing how we generate and evaluate ideas. And it's happening faster than most designers realise.

Remember when generating 100 concepts meant days of sketching and brainstorming? Those days are rapidly disappearing. And here's what's happening instead:

• AI can generate hundreds of ideas in seconds

AI tools like Midjourney, DALL-E, and Ideogram can produce more design concepts in minutes than a team could create in a week. Need 50 variations of a dashboard layout? That's now just a prompt away.

• User research is becoming data-driven

We're moving from "I think users want this" to "The data shows users want this". AI-powered UX research can now identify patterns in user behavior that suggest unmet needs — often before users themselves can articulate them.

• Idea evaluation is getting smarter

AI isn't just generating ideas; it's helping us evaluate them too. These days, tools like Chat GPT or Claude can predict how users might react to different concepts based on historical data and behavioral patterns.

What this means for UX & product teams

This AI shift is creating both opportunities and challenges for design teams:

The good news:

• Ideas come faster and with more data backing them up
• Teams can try out many more solutions than ever before
• Designers can spend less time coming up with basic ideas and more time making them better

The challenges:

• There are now too many ideas to sort through 
• Design teams need new skills to prompt AI effectively
• If everyone uses the same AI tools, designs might start looking too similar

As AI speeds up ideation, more teams are mixing different approaches instead of following just one. At Eleken, we often use the creative structure of Design Thinking together with the fast, flexible process of Agile. If you want to see how we make it work, check out our take on Design Thinking vs Agile — and how to get the best of both worlds.

How to integrate AI into your ideation process

If you want to use AI in your ideation process, here's a simple three-step approach that will help you to get started:

1. Use AI to create lots of ideas
Start by asking AI to give you many different options. For example:

• Ask ChatGPT to suggest 20 different ways to welcome new users to your app
• Use Midjourney to show you different layouts for an important screen
• Ask Claude to come up with 15 ways to solve a specific user pain point

2. Use your human expertise to pick the best ideas 

This is where your skills come in. Look through the AI-created ideas and:

• Pick out the most promising ones
• Look for common themes across different suggestions
• Find opportunities the AI might have missed

3. Work back and forth with AI 

Take your chosen ideas back to AI for improvement:

• "Show me five different versions of idea #3"
• "How could we make this work for big companies vs. small businesses?"
• "What problems might users have with this design?"

Once you've got all those AI-generated ideas, try throwing them into a Moodboard to spot patterns and pick out the best concepts. The key is having an ongoing conversation between your creativity and AI's help.

AI won't replace creativity, but it will make ideation 10x faster. The designers who succeed will be those who learn to work with AI, using it to expand what's possible while making the final decisions themselves.

Now that we've covered how AI is changing ideation, let's get practical. How does a real UX agency like Eleken actually use (and sometimes ignore) design thinking in real client projects?

How Eleken uses (and ignores) design thinking in real SaaS projects

Design thinking is great in theory, but when you're working with real clients who have tight deadlines and limited budgets, you need to be selective about what parts actually deliver value.

At Eleken, we've worked with hundreds of SaaS companies, from early-stage startups to established enterprise players. Here's our honest take on what works and what doesn't.

What we actually use from Design Thinking

• Rapid prototyping & testing

Nothing beats putting something tangible in front of users and seeing how they react. We don't wait until a design is "perfect" to test it — we test rough concepts early and often.

In our work with myInterview, a video interview platform helping companies cut hiring time by 70%, we needed to solve a big problem fast. They were losing 90% of job candidates who started but quit halfway through the interview process. By quickly testing different designs, we found out why: their forms were confusing users. Simple checkboxes that clearly showed where to click fixed the issue and kept users from dropping out.

• User-Centered Problem Framing

We always start by asking "What is the actual problem we're solving?" rather than jumping to solutions. This sounds obvious, but you'd be surprised how many teams skip this step.

• Iterative approach

We work in quick cycles, testing and refining as we go. Design isn't a one-and-done process — it's a conversation with users that evolves over time.

What we skip (without feeling guilty)

• Endless sticky-note sessions

Instead of spending hours on sticky notes and theoretical exercises, we prefer jumping straight into building prototypes. It’s a more practical way to test ideas quickly. If you’re curious about how we balance Design Thinking vs Minimum Viable Product approaches, we break it down here.

• Design sprints that go nowhere

Many companies proudly announce, "We did a design sprint!" only to have all those ideas collect dust afterwards. We only run design sprints when we know the results will actually get built. Otherwise, what's the point? 

Knowing when to use Design Thinking vs. Design Sprint can save you from wasting time on the wrong approach.

• Documentation overload

Some by-the-book approaches want you to document every tiny decision along the way. That might work for big corporations with dedicated design departments, but for most SaaS teams? It's overkill. We keep things lean and only document what actually helps us make decisions. Your future self will thank you for the clarity — and for not having to read through a 100-page design thinking journal.

Conclusion

So there you have it — the honest truth about ideation for SaaS companies that don't have endless resources or time.

Let's recap what we've learned:

• Design thinking is a toolkit, not a rulebook. Take what works for your specific situation and leave the rest.
• The first ideas are rarely the best ones. Push past the obvious solutions to find truly innovative approaches.
• Traditional brainstorming is overrated. Try AI-powered brainstorming, speculative design, or TRIZ instead.
• AI is transforming ideation. It won't replace your creativity, but it will make it 10x faster if you know how to use it.
• Sometimes the best applications aren't in the textbook. Like using prototypes as sales tools to win enterprise clients.

The most successful SaaS companies aren't the ones rigidly following every design thinking step — they're the ones who know how to adapt the principles to their unique challenges.

Ready to transform your SaaS product with a design that actually works? Let's talk about how Eleken can help you build solutions your users will love.