Ideation framework to develop a/b test ideas

For years I've come up with 8 - 10 test ideas per month. Other people often ask me: how the hell do you do that?

First: Get rid of the concept of ONE big idea, and embrace that the more ideas you have, the more likely it is there is a brilliant one among them (don't just take my word for it, take science's word for it - Quantity yields quality when it comes to creativity (2015) ). 

Phase 1: creative ideation

Creativity comes from our reptile brain, or System 1 as Daniel Kahnemann would say. Ideas can come from anywhere, but often it has to do with association. They can be inspired from data, other websites, psychology or just your own creative mind. 

To facilitate the creative, associative brain make sure to keep any judgement or ratio away. And also: make it as easy as possible for you to write or store ideas (think of a writer keeping a notebook). 

If you've run out of ideas, use the brains of others. Other people can come up with ideas that you'll never have. Diversity is key here. I've had great tests suggested by HiPPo's, developers and customer service agents. Just add them to your big list of ideas and only in the next phase you'll figure out if they are viable or not. You can help other people come up with ideas by not judging anything and always adding their idea to the list. This creates a safe space for ideation. 

You and everyone around you will create a hug pile of dirt (possible ideas). Don't be afraid to get your hands dirty and filter out the best ones. In phase 2 you'll figure out which ideas are ‘the gold’ in your dirt.

The second phase is where most people start, by rationalizing an idea. But watch out: the ratio that you use so often shuts down the capacity of your creative reptile brain and kills associative processes quickly. Ideally you are able to turn your ratio ‘off’ sometimes. 

Phase 2: ratio

If you have a backlog of ideas from phase 1 somewhere, the second phase will determine which ideas are actually viable as an experiment — it filters the gold from the dirt. You can use frameworks like: creating a hypothesis, prioritization and MDE calculations to check which ideas are viable and which can have the biggest impact.