Feeling Stuck? Try an Ideation Activity from Design Coaching

Many clients come to us feeling stuck with their health and wellness goals. This is a normal part of changing our behavior. The problem is that when some people get to this point, they give up and go back to their old, unhealthy behaviors. That’s where Take Care Coaching, LLC comes in. We help reframe a challenge by helping you gain different perspectives, uncover motivation and come up with new ideas to try. Some of the ideation activities we suggest come from Design Coaching, which is a coaching model that helps us live our lives more intentionally and by design. A big part of Design Coaching focuses on coming up with lots and lots of ideas to protype and test out. Have your tried some of these before?

Brainstorming involves focusing on the challenge at hand and generating as many potential solutions as possible. We use this all the time in health coaching.

Braindump is where you write every little thing that’s on your mind. It helps you gain focus on things that need doing.

Brainwalk is based on the principle of cross-pollination by having people on your support team build upon each other’s ideas in a structured way. You get to use the knowledge and creative input of those around you.

Mindmap is an activity that combines free association of words with drawing on paper. The result is dozens of concepts you may have never thought possible.

Worst idea exercise is where you purposefully seek the worst solutions to a problem. Doing so can take pressure off of what you’re trying to solve, boost confidence and increase creativity.

Vision board is where you make your goals into a collage of images using magazine pictures, drawings, quotes, what have you. Seeing your goals laid out in photos can spark ideas to get unstuck.

Bodystorm is to act as if one of your ideas actually existed by roleplaying the different parts of the interaction.

Let us help you get unstuck and make lasting changes! Email info@takecarecoach.com for more information. And check out our resources below for more ideas!

Resources

Dam, R. & Siang, T. (2020). Stage 3 in the Design Thinking Process: Ideate: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/stage-3-in-the-design-thinking-process-ideate

Interaction Design Foundation (n.d.) Course: Design Thinking - The Beginner's Guide:
https://www.interaction-design.org/courses/design-thinking-the-beginner-s-guide

Wycoff, J. (2018). Mindmapping in 8 Easy Steps: http://www.joycewycoff.com/2018/08/mindmapping-in-8-easy-steps.html