Worst Possible Idea
Generate the worst solutions you can imagine — with one twist: it must use no more than three moving parts — then mine them for what actually works.
Set a timer for 3 minutes. Generate your worst ideas with this additional constraint: it must use no more than three moving parts. Come up with as many deliberately terrible solutions as you can — the kind that would get you fired, bankrupt the company, or make users actively hostile. Be specific: not just "make it bad" but "charge users per keystroke" or "require a fax of your passport to log in."
Now examine each terrible idea. For each one, ask: why exactly is this bad? Write down the specific reason. Then invert that reason into a design principle. The terrible idea "charge per keystroke" is bad because it punishes engagement — invert it and you get "reward engagement," which is a real design direction.
flowchart TD
A["Your problem"] --> B["Generate terrible ideas"]
B --> C["Idea 1: deliberately awful"]
B --> D["Idea 2: deliberately awful"]
B --> E["Idea 3: deliberately awful"]
C --> F["Why is it bad?"]
D --> G["Why is it bad?"]
E --> H["Why is it bad?"]
F --> I["Invert into design principle"]
G --> I
H --> I
style B fill:#e74c3c,color:#fff
style I fill:#2ecc71,color:#fff
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When to Use
- The room is stuck in "good idea" paralysis — everyone is filtering before speaking
- Brainstorming has gone stale and keeps producing the same cautious suggestions
- You want to discover hidden assumptions about what makes a solution "good"
- You need to break tension and energize a demoralized exploration session
Example
Problem: "How do we reduce churn in our SaaS product?"
Terrible ideas:
1. Delete the user's data if they don't log in for 3 days
2. Make the cancellation flow 47 steps long
3. Send 20 emails per day begging them to come back
4. Lock their most-used feature behind an annual contract
Inversions:
1. Why bad: Punishes absence with irreversible loss. Inverted: Reward return with a visible record of what they've built. Design principle: Show accumulated value on login — "You have 340 saved analyses."
2. Why bad: Traps users through friction, breeds resentment. Inverted: Make cancellation easy but show what they'll lose. Design principle: The cancellation page becomes a personalized summary of value received.
3. Why bad: Volume without relevance is spam. Inverted: One perfectly timed, perfectly relevant message. Design principle: Trigger re-engagement based on the user's specific usage pattern, not a calendar.
4. Why bad: Coercion erodes trust. Inverted: Make the most-used feature so good they choose to stay. Design principle: Invest disproportionately in the features that correlate with retention.
Inversion 1 and 3 are concrete product ideas that never came up in the original brainstorm.
Watch Out For
- The terrible ideas must be specific, not vaguely bad. "Make it worse" yields nothing. "Require users to solve a CAPTCHA every 30 seconds" yields something
- Don't skip the "why is it bad" step. The inversion is where the value lives, not the joke
- This is a quick move — 3 minutes generating, 5 minutes inverting. If you spend longer, you're overthinking it
- Some terrible ideas are actually just bold ideas in disguise. If a "worst idea" makes you pause and think "wait, what if...", follow that thread
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