Concept brainstorming

✅ Why this step unlocks technical creativity early

Before CAD, specs, or testing—there’s brainstorming.

In engineering-led innovation, brainstorming isn’t just about wild ideas. It’s about exploring possibilities: how something might work, move, fit, or function. This step invites technical curiosity, unlocks assumptions, and builds a shared understanding of potential directions—without the pressure of precision yet.

It’s where engineering meets imagination.

📘 What you’ll achieve

  • Generate a wide range of mechanical or functional possibilities
  • Combine creative input across disciplines (e.g., electronics, materials)
  • Explore edge cases, constraints, and alternate pathways
  • Create the raw material for concepts, prototypes, or specs

🛠️ Tools and methods

  • Sketchstorming

    Use fast, annotated sketches to visualise technical ideas, not just visuals.

  • Engineering Prompt Cards

    Pose questions like: “What if it moved differently?” or “How else could we attach this?”

  • ‘How Else?’ Laddering

    Challenge first assumptions with “What’s another way to...?”

  • Constraint Shuffling

    Brainstorm within limits: cost cap, single-material, no fasteners, etc.

  • Post-Idea Sorting

    Group by feasibility, novelty, or integration potential—not just “best”.

⚠️ Avoid these traps

  • Filtering too soon. Diverge first, converge later. Quantity beats quality at this stage.
  • One expert dominates. Structure time so every voice contributes.
  • Too focused on visuals. Encourage functional, experiential, and technical ideas—not just form.
  • Skipping the record. Photograph boards, digitise sticky notes, and capture context.

💡 What other teams say

“One of our best concepts came from a 10-second doodle someone made while explaining a ‘bad idea’.”

– Mechatronics Lead, Smart Furniture Startup

💡 Use physical materials if you can—whiteboards, magnets, models. Moving ideas with your hands helps spark different thinking.

🔗 Helpful links & resources

✍️ Quick self-check

  • Did we capture more than 10 possible directions?
  • Did we include both safe and unconventional ideas?
  • Did we separate exploration from evaluation?
  • Are our brainstorm outputs ready to feed into sketching or concept selection?

🎨 Visual concept (optional)

Illustration: Three team members around a whiteboard filled with engineering doodles—gears, joints, exploded views, and arrows. One person is pointing at a rough sketch labeled “Alt hinge”, another is pinning up a note that says “2-part mould?”, and a third is sorting sketches into feasibility buckets.

Visual shows the collaborative, technical nature of engineering brainstorming—prioritising ideas that explore how a product might work, not just how it might look.
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