Better than Brainstorming - Part 2: 4 MORE Ways to Ideate

Questions Only

What if there were a way to play a game where you could come up with tons of ideas? How long would it last? Who would participate? Would it be like a board game? Would there be talking involved or should we all be silent and act out our ideas? Why do we even need to come up with new ideas in the first place? How will we evaluate the good ideas? When will we know when the game of generating ideas is over?

See what we're doing here? Like the classic game on the improv series Whose Line Is It Anyway, this technique encourages participants to speak only in questions. Of course, we don't just mean random, non sequitur questions. These questions should be all about the people you're trying to help. Why do they have this problem? Why hasn't it been addressed before? What could go wrong? What if they tried something different?

There are an infinite number of questions you could come up with, but for the sake of expediency, we suggest you shoot for somewhere in the 50-200 range. So why are questions helpful in generating ideas? Our brain is hardwired to respond to questions. We find them engaging, and our default reaction is to try to answer them. By asking many explicit questions about your design problem, you encourage the automatic system in your brain to begin thinking up answers that could lead to some pretty great ideas. Research has shown time and again that posing questions is extremely effective at generating problem-solving ideas.

This technique works particularly well when you're designing apps or digital products. Questions like "Why would someone open this app at 7am?" or "What would make a user recommend this to a friend?" force you to think from your user's perspective rather than your own assumptions.

Copy Hat

Here's where we need to bring up the obligatory Picasso quote on design: "Good artists copy; great artists steal." So one of the greatest artists of all time is pretty much giving everyone license to copy other people's work, right? Well, not quite. What Picasso meant by "steal" is actually taking the inkling of an idea from another person and then transforming it in a new way so that people recognize you as the owner of your work and not just rehashing the same tired idea as someone else.

So how do we apply this in the world of innovation? We put on different hats—figuratively, of course. By this, we mean pretend you're someone else trying to solve this problem. How would that person do it?

Whose hats do you try on? There's really no limit to what you can try, but we can offer some suggestions. Two types of hats to try are organizational hats and personal hats. For example, an organizational hat might be Google. You'd put your best Google hat on and ask yourself, "how would Google think about this problem?" For a personal hat, you might ask yourself, "how would FDR solve this problem?"

We definitely recommend starting with the people and organizations you admire. These could be famous and well-known like the examples we just mentioned, or they might be people in your life, like a mentor or close relative. Once you've tried on a couple hats and have some interesting ideas, the next step is to take that idea from copying to stealing—er, transforming.

To really make that idea your own, you need to put your own hat back on and ask yourself how you and your organization would implement the ideas in question. Think about how your purpose, personality, principles, and practices are different than the other hats you were wearing. How would those differences manifest themselves in these ideas?

Ada, Adalo's AI builder, lets you describe what you want and generates your app. Magic Start creates complete app foundations from a description, while Magic Add adds features through natural language.

Modern AI tools can accelerate this transformation process. Adalo's Magic Start feature, for instance, lets you describe an app concept inspired by another product, then generates a complete foundation tailored to your specific needs—turning borrowed inspiration into something uniquely yours.

Zoom

This technique is a two for one. Not only does it help alleviate a common problem in most brainstorming meetings, but it also helps you generate new ideas.

The problem: Most brainstorming meetings are framed around one level of the problem. For example, let's say that you're a teacher and you and your fellow co-workers are trying to come up with new ways to get more kids involved in your after school robotics program. Once this problem has been framed like this, everyone is trying to think of solutions at the overall robotics problem level—like changing the day or getting a new parent to run the program.

But there is a higher level: should we even have an after school robotics program? Should we instead try to figure out what other after school activities our students would like to do? And then there's also a smaller level—coming up with ways to improve specific details of the last project they did. Maybe if you could just figure out how to improve the last project that wasn't great, more kids would want to join. This is the issue with framing the problem at one level; we never think about the other levels at all.

The solution: In this technique, every five minutes, you alternate your focus from the large picture of your problem to a very minute detail. By forcing yourself to intensely focus on the problem and then switch points of view, you create the opportunity to draw associations between specific details and broad themes as well as come up with new ideas to fix different levels of the problem.

One profession that does this really well is architects. Designing a building takes a lot of work, and because of this, architects are quite adept at switching between scales. They'll work on the big-picture activities like overall site planning or what the overall concept for the building is, and then they'll switch to the detailed like drawing specific sections or picking out materials. They'll even work on the scale in between those two—like drawing out the overall plan of the building or working on the elevation. This switching of contexts cross-pollinates thoughts between them, increasing the odds that you will come up with a novel idea.

App builders that let you see your entire project at once make this zooming technique easier to practice. Adalo's canvas can display up to 400 screens simultaneously, letting you zoom between the big picture and granular details without losing context—unlike builders that limit you to viewing just one or two screens at a time.

Magic Glasses

This is probably the technique that takes the most time. First, you'll need to acquire a pair of magic glasses... Ok, you got us; they're not literal glasses. This is going to require some imagination on your part.

The way this exercise works is that you go about your normal day (or, even better, your week), from work to home to everything in between—all your normal chores, fun, friends, and family. We can hear you now, "Just live my life like normal? No problem!" Ok, so there's a little bit more to it than that. After all, this does have something to do with coming up with new ideas.

As you go about your normal day, pretend you have these magic glasses on that no one else can see but let you view the world through the lens of your innovation problem. In practice, what you're doing is keeping your problem top of mind even when you're doing the mundane activities of your everyday life like washing the dishes or brushing your teeth.

These activities are likely unrelated to your problem for the most part, but that's exactly why they have such potential to form novel combinations and help you come up with great new ideas. In fact, it was these very same magic glasses that Archimedes was wearing when he made the connection between taking a bath and verifying the gold in the King's crown.

The magic glasses technique pairs well with rapid prototyping tools. When inspiration strikes during your commute or while cooking dinner, you want to capture and test that idea quickly before it fades. AI-assisted app builders let you describe your sudden insight and see it take shape immediately—turning fleeting inspiration into tangible prototypes you can evaluate and refine.

An Idea Machine

These eight techniques are all designed to help your brain understand your innovation problem and how to overcome it by making new associations. These associations are at the heart of ideation and coming up with something truly novel.

Coming up with ideas from scratch is intimidating. But the good news is that that's not where ideas come from. They come from your experiences and by combining concepts in novel ways. Use these eight ideation techniques—Analogous Rex, Mix Master, Chart the Course, Headhunter, Questions Only, Copy Hat, Zoom, and Magic Glasses—to turn your brain into an idea machine.

The gap between ideation and execution has never been smaller. Once you've generated promising concepts using these techniques, modern AI-powered app builders like Adalo let you prototype and test them rapidly. Adalo is a no-code app builder for database-driven web apps and native iOS and Android apps—one version across all three platforms, published to the Apple App Store and Google Play. With over 3 million apps created on the platform and a visual builder described as "easy as PowerPoint," you can move from idea to working prototype in hours rather than weeks. Magic Add lets you describe new features in plain language and see them implemented instantly, while X-Ray identifies performance issues before they affect users—so your innovative ideas can scale to millions of users without technical bottlenecks.

FAQ

Why choose Adalo over other app building solutions?

Adalo is an AI-powered app builder that creates true native iOS and Android apps from a single codebase. Unlike web wrappers, it compiles to native code and publishes directly to both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. With unlimited database records on paid plans, no usage-based charges, and infrastructure that scales to 1M+ monthly active users, Adalo handles the hardest part of launching an app—getting it in front of users—automatically.

What's the fastest way to build and publish an app to the App Store?

Adalo's drag-and-drop interface and AI-assisted building let you go from idea to published app in days rather than months. Magic Start generates complete app foundations from simple descriptions, while Magic Add lets you add features by describing what you want. Adalo handles the complex App Store submission process, so you can focus on your app's features and user experience instead of wrestling with certificates and provisioning profiles.

Can I easily apply ideation techniques to build innovative app features?

Yes. Once you've generated ideas using methods like Questions Only, Copy Hat, or Zoom, you can quickly prototype and test them in Adalo's visual builder without writing any code. The platform's AI features help turn creative concepts into functional app features rapidly—describe what you want, and Magic Add implements it.

What is the 'Questions Only' ideation technique?

The Questions Only technique encourages participants to speak only in questions about the people they're trying to help. This method works because our brains are hardwired to respond to questions—we find them engaging and automatically try to answer them. Aim for 50-200 questions about your design problem to trigger your brain's problem-solving abilities.

How does the 'Copy Hat' technique help generate new ideas?

The Copy Hat technique involves pretending you're someone else—either a person you admire or an organization like Google—and asking how they would solve your problem. After generating ideas from different perspectives, you 'transform' those ideas by putting your own hat back on and considering how your unique purpose, personality, and practices would implement them differently.

What is the Zoom technique in brainstorming?

The Zoom technique addresses a common brainstorming problem where teams focus on only one level of a problem. Every five minutes, you alternate between the big picture and minute details of your challenge. This switching of contexts, similar to how architects work between site planning and material selection, cross-pollinates thoughts and increases the odds of discovering novel solutions.

How do Magic Glasses help with innovation?

Magic Glasses is an ideation technique where you keep your innovation problem top of mind while going about your normal daily activities. By viewing mundane tasks through the lens of your problem, you create opportunities for novel associations between unrelated concepts—just like Archimedes connecting his bath to verifying gold in the King's crown.

How much does it cost to build an app with Adalo?

Adalo's web and true-native mobile builder starts at $36/month with unlimited usage and app store publishing. Unlike competitors that charge based on database records or usage, Adalo's paid plans include unlimited database records and no usage-based charges—meaning no surprise bills as your app grows.

Do I need coding experience to turn my ideas into apps?

No coding experience is required. Adalo's visual builder has been described as "easy as PowerPoint," and the AI-assisted features let you build by describing what you want in plain language. Over 3 million apps have been created on the platform by people without technical backgrounds.

Can my app scale if my idea becomes successful?

Yes. Adalo 3.0's modular infrastructure scales to serve apps with millions of monthly active users, with no upper ceiling. Unlike app wrappers that hit performance constraints under load, Adalo's purpose-built architecture maintains speed at scale—the platform is now 3-4x faster than before the 2026 infrastructure overhaul.