Brainstorming is a wide-spread technique used in various contexts. In usability engineering, brainstorming is often used in design teams to think about one or more potential design solutions. Brainstorming is also used to prepare interviews with stakeholders, because the usability experts have to choose the questions he wants to ask.

Brainstorming comes with several pros and cons. Brainstorming is not a tool that is in any case successful. The reason is the people that take part in the brainstorming. They might feel uncomfortable, because they are required to contribute ideas in a specific time. Others might be overwhelmed by dominant speakers. Naturally, brainstorming can be very successful if the people on the team are creative thinkers that are able to play with their own ideas and those of others. Then, brainstorming usually generated loads of ideas.

My recommendation is: if you intend to use brainstorming to think about a problem at hand, do carefully consider the people you invite for the brainstorming. This does not mean that reserved and tacit people should not take part in the process. But to integrate them, you should rather consider inviting them to a electronic brainstorming. In the end, the results of different kinds of brainstorming can be consolidated.

Disregarding the technique you will use, the introduction to the topic of the brainstorming is crucial. Many brainstorming sessions are less successful simply because the team is not sure what the discussion is all about. This will make participants feel very unsecure and in a worst case, people will be frightened to contribute ideas because they are frightened to be wrong. Because brainstorming is all about gathering any idea that comes to anyone’s mind, this would be a mess.

As with all usability techniques, the application of brainstorming as requirements engineering and data gathering techniques requires a charismatic and experienced expert.