obra/superpowers@brainstorming

To turn vague ideas into concrete design plans, use a structured brainstorming workflow that gathers project context, poses clarifying questions, explores multiple approaches with trade-offs, and outputs a formal design doc for team approval before implementation begins.

The best way to structure brainstorming for feature refinements is through a stepwise process that enforces explicit design documentation before implementation, ensuring all user needs and technical approaches are vetted and approved in a formal plan doc.

Create a design doc that compares approaches by generating 2-3 options with clear trade-offs and recommendations during the ideation phase, then documenting the chosen path within a structured plan that includes transition cues for the implementation team.

Structured ideation works for both early-stage product concepts and service improvements, guiding teams to ground design decisions by exploring user needs and proposing vetted approaches before any implementation transition occurs.

You need a formal design plan before starting implementation whenever you have a vague idea or feature refinement, ensuring context is gathered, clarifying questions are resolved, and an explicit design is approved to prevent scope creep.

Skipping the approval step is not recommended because the workflow requires explicit designs to be presented and vetted before implementation, ensuring the generated plan doc accurately reflects team consensus and project context.