Why flipping your ideation brainstorms will lead to more creativity

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The Persuasive Patterns card decks is a powerful tool for shaping user experiences. They help teams integrate behavioral science into design, leveraging principles like scarcity, reciprocity, and commitment to encourage user action. But what if using these cards too early in the ideation process could actually limit creativity rather than enhance it?

A recent study suggests just that. It found that teams who started their brainstorming with persuasive design patterns tended to generate more similar, predictable ideas. In contrast, those who brainstormed freely first before incorporating persuasive design principles produced a wider variety of solutions.

This phenomenon, known as the Commonality Effect, reveals an interesting paradox: while persuasive patterns provide structured insights, they can also narrow thinking when introduced too soon. The key to maximizing their impact? Flipping the process—by letting creativity flow first and refining with patterns later.

Why do teams default to the same ideas?

Participants who used the cards from the start reported feeling overly reliant on them. Some even dismissed their own ideas if they didn’t align with the predefined patterns.

When a team sits down to generate ideas, their natural instinct is to seek structure—something to anchor their thinking. Persuasive design cards provide exactly that. They offer clear, predefined behavioral insights that teams can immediately apply.

While this helps with decision-making, it can also create a mental shortcut where teams lean too heavily on the cards rather than exploring novel ideas. Instead of free association and open-ended exploration, brainstorming sessions can become pattern-matching exercises, where teams try to fit ideas into predefined molds.

A study titled Evaluating the Use of Persuasive Design Cards for Novice Designers demonstrated this effect through a series of workshops. Teams were split into two groups:

  1. One group started with persuasive pattern cards.
  2. The other brainstormed without them first and applied patterns later.

The results were clear: the first group gravitated toward the same common themes—socialization, personalization, and progress tracking. The second group, however, generated a much broader range of ideas, incorporating unexpected and diverse solutions before refining them with behavioral science.

What’s more, many participants who used the cards from the start reported feeling overly reliant on them. Some even dismissed their own ideas if they didn’t align with the predefined patterns.

The issue isn’t with persuasive design patterns themselves—they’re a fantastic tool for shaping user behavior. The problem is when they are introduced in the creative process.

The “Ideas First, Patterns Later” method

Instead of letting persuasive patterns dictate brainstorming from the outset, teams should reverse the process. The Ideas First, Patterns Later method ensures that creativity isn’t constrained too early, while still leveraging the power of persuasive design.

Step 1: Start with Open Brainstorming
Set aside 15–20 minutes for pure idea generation, without any structured frameworks. Encourage free association, wild thinking, and as many ideas as possible. The key here is to respect the divergent phase of ideation—before jumping into evaluation or structure.

Step 2: Cluster and Identify Strong Ideas
Once a variety of ideas have been generated, group them into themes. At this stage, the team can start recognizing patterns, but without forcing ideas into predefined frameworks.

Step 3: Introduce Persuasive Patterns as a Refinement Tool
Now, bring in Persuasive Pattern cards as a way to strengthen, enhance, or refine existing ideas—not as a starting point.

For example:

  • If an idea involves onboarding gamification, and the team draws the Commitment pattern, they might refine the concept by adding a progress tracker to reinforce long-term engagement.
  • If an idea is about reducing drop-offs in checkout, and the team gets Scarcity, they might adjust their strategy by emphasizing limited-time offers to increase urgency.

By using Persuasive Patterns as a secondary tool, teams avoid defaulting to predictable solutions and instead use behavioral insights to enhance their best ideas.

How to push beyond predictable thinking

Another useful tweak? Discarding the first round of ideas altogether.

Research suggests that first-round brainstorming ideas—whether using design patterns or not—tend to be obvious and surface-level. The most interesting, innovative solutions tend to emerge in later rounds of brainstorming, after teams have pushed past the familiar.

If you really want to break free from conventional thinking, try introducing an element of randomness:

  • Pick two random persuasive pattern cards and force them into a single idea.
  • The goal is to combine them in unexpected ways, which often leads to fresh, unconventional solutions.

For example, combining Social Proof with Autonomy could lead to an idea where users see what their peers are doing, but also have the freedom to customize their experience based on those insights.

These methods challenge habitual thinking and ensure that teams don’t just apply predictable best practices—they create something truly original.

Why this approach works

By shifting from Patterns-First to Ideas-First, teams unlock the best of both worlds:

  • Unconstrained, raw creativity in the beginning
  • Structured, behaviorally informed refinement afterward
  • More diverse, original, and effective solutions

Persuasive patterns aren’t the problem—they’re an incredible asset. But like any tool, they need to be used at the right time.

So the next time you facilitate an ideation session, resist the urge to start with Persuasive Patterns right away. Instead, let your team explore freely first, and then use the patterns to sharpen and refine their best ideas.

You might be surprised by what you discover.

If you’ve ever left a brainstorming session feeling like the ideas weren’t truly new, it might be because structure was applied too soon.

Creativity needs space to breathe. The most innovative, high-impact ideas happen when teams have the freedom to explore before applying structured insights.

So next time you run an ideation workshop, try flipping the process: Ideas first. Patterns later. The difference might surprise you.

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Anders Toxboe Author

Based out of Copenhagen, Denmark, Anders Toxboe is a Product Discovery coach and trainer, helping both small and big clients get their product right. He also founded UI-Patterns.com and a series of other projects. Follow Anders at @uipatternscom.