amattson

The trouble is trying to create a new solution without thinking AT ALL about current practices. You, trying to be inventive, are then constricted by the thing they're trying not to be. The current model may have some good points, which could then be worked further through more design iterations, if you were able to see them. In our emotional competitiveness, it's got to be hard to single these out.

Also, I wonder if it would be useful to make sure that some people on the team are familiar only with the end goal and a rough outline of the problem, and not with current practice, ensuring that their brainstorming isn't tainted by the "we need to do something DIFFERENT" mindset.

This is of course true, but ironically, something that is taught in design school and not business school. The most successful designs (and what isn't design?) are made when the author/creator doesn't get attached personally to any idea, sets them aside to create new ones, and learns how to "kill the babies" (critically attacking or dropping an idea/plan). Assuming your idea is good to go and getting right to the details (i.e. programming) is probably certain death for you. Reiterate, reiterate, reiterate. The best idea is almost never the first one.

I'm unsure whether it's because of the words I'm choosing, but there don't seem to be any really valuable suggestions in the list, and often the suggestions are themselves unavailable.

I like the thesaurus concept, but doesn't quite solve the problem of people parking any and every domain they can (if that can be solved, grrr). Perhaps breaking the words down to roots and culling new meanings out of those foundations would yield more interesting and useful results.

The idea of suggesting new terms and letting you know whether or not they're available is useful, but the thesaurus function doesn't seem to be as developed as, for example, visualthesaurus.com.