Brainstorming As A Martial Art

Brainstorming is a useful tool.

Start the planning process with a good brainstorming session.

Now that you have a goal in mind and an idea of who your target readers are it's time to get to grips with the site itself. Brainstorming is an excellent way to generate ideas. Grab a large pad of paper and write down any ideas you can think of. At this stage it’s important not to worry about how silly an idea might be. You will be amazed at how a silly idea can lead you into something new and exciting. Think of everything and anything that may be useful to the project no matter how far fetched it may seem. Get others to join in if you can. The more the merrier.

After a good brainstorming session you should have a pile of paper full of random ideas. It’s time to comb through and sort out the solid ideas from the fluff. Consider each idea on its merits. You may find that an idea that seemed crazy at the time suddenly seems much more solid. Perhaps two or three random suggestions together make a terrific one. When you’ve examined the results of your labours and come up with lots of good ideas you’ll need to start sorting them into categories that will form the structure of your site.

Remember your goals. Use your goal statement to measure your ideas. Do they add anything to what you are trying to achieve? Keep ideas that add something to the aim of your site or that offer something useful to your target audience. Keep the ideas you reject. They may be just what you need if you decide to add a new section at some time in the future.

The brainstorming session should have given you some new ideas for content and you have used your goal statement and user profile to guide your choices. At this point you need to rough out the structure of your site and see how the content fits together.