Hey Designer,
You have a sharp problem statement. But now you face the terror of the blank page, and the pressure to generate hundreds of initial concepts. After the first few obvious ideas, you hit a wall.
This is the moment your ideation stalls.
Asking an AI for "new ideas" usually results in a generic, uninspired list. That’s because AI defaults to the most common patterns in its training data. To get breakthrough concepts, you need to break the AI's default patterns by forcing it to think from new, unexpected perspectives.
This is the method for turning your AI into a diverse brainstorming partner.
The Method: The Persona-Driven Ideation Sprint
The core principle is to instruct your AI to adopt specific, constrained personas. This forces it to generate ideas from unique viewpoints, giving you a much wider range of creative concepts.
Step 1: Set the Foundation
First, give your AI the core problem statement. This provides the necessary context for all future ideas.
Prompt:
"I am starting a design project. My refined problem statement is: 'How might we create a subscription-based e-bike service for female university students in Pune that guarantees safe, last-mile connectivity between 8 PM and midnight?'"
Step 2: Generate Ideas from a Practical Persona
Next, instruct the AI to adopt the persona of a pragmatic expert to generate functional, real-world ideas.
Prompt:
"Now, act as a cynical transport logistics engineer focused only on feasibility and efficiency. Based on the problem statement, generate 10 practical, no-frills concepts."
Step 3: Generate Ideas from a Creative Persona
Finally, instruct the AI to adopt a completely different persona to generate unconventional, futuristic ideas.
Prompt:
"Excellent. Now, change your persona completely. Act as a wildly imaginative sci-fi author. Generate 10 unconventional concepts that ignore current technical limitations."
Repeat this process with different personas (a cautious safety inspector, a community-focused urban planner, a budget-obsessed student) until you have a flood of diverse ideas.
The Takeaway
This method elevates your role from a lone designer waiting for a muse to a creative director leading a diverse brainstorming team. It’s a reliable system for manufacturing creativity on demand, killing creative block, and ensuring your ideation phase explores a vast territory of possibilities—not just the safe and obvious ones.
P.S. Your idea now has a unique look and feel. But is it a good idea? Next, I'll show you how to build an 'AI Red Team' to find every single loophole in your concept before your professor does