A practical playbook for brainstorming better learning.
This is how our team takes a learning project from a fuzzy idea to something real. We listen first, think out loud together, and test concepts before we commit. It’s the way we actually work, with collaboration tools and AI in the mix at every step.
Start with the problem
Before we jump to solutions, we get clear on who we’re helping and what success looks like. Ask questions, don’t make assumptions. The best ideas come from a problem you really understand.
Think out loud, together
Brainstorming is a team sport. Get stakeholders, learners, and AI in the same room and build on each other’s ideas. Nobody has the whole answer alone.
Make it real, fast
Don’t argue in the abstract. Sketch it, rough it out, experiment and play. Put a concept in front of people early, because you learn more from one real reaction than from ten opinions.
How to use this notebook
Each section is a step in our loop: listen, brainstorm, get feedback, test, and refine. Read it straight through, or jump in and take a peek at whatever stage you’re in. Borrow anything that helps and make it your own!
Start every project with clear goals.
A brainstorm without a goal is just a nice conversation. We name what we’re trying to achieve, and how we’ll know we got there, so every idea points at something that matters.
Define the outcome
What should be different when this works? We write the goal as a change in what people can do, not a list of features or topics to cover.
Know your learner
Who is this for? What do they already know, and where do they get stuck today? Ask them. Real answers beat an imagined “average” user every time.
Set the guardrails
Timeline, budget, platform, must-haves and won’t-dos. Naming the box up front makes the brainstorm inside it a lot more productive.
Claude Turn a rough idea into a goal statement
We’re planning a learning project: [describe the idea]. The audience is [who], and today they struggle with [problem]. Help me write a one-sentence goal in the form: “After this, [learner] will be able to [do what], so that [why].” Then list 3 measurable signals we’d see if it worked, and 5 questions we should answer before we start designing.
Why it works: you hand over the idea, audience, and problem, then ask AI to force the goal into a measurable shape — and to surface the unknowns before you spend effort.
The one-sentence test
If the team can’t say the goal in one sentence, we’re not aligned yet. Write it on a sticky, pin it to the top of the board, and check every idea against it as you go.
Get everyone aligned before you build.
Misalignment is the most expensive bug in any project, and the slowest to show up. A few minutes getting aligned now, on goals, language, and what “done” looks like, saves weeks of rework later.
One shared brief
Goal, audience, constraints, and success signals in one place everyone can see. One source of truth beats a dozen side conversations.
Agree on “done”
What does finished look like, and how will we know it’s good? We set the bar together now, so feedback later is about the work, not the goalposts.
Name the roles
Who decides, who builds, who reviews, who speaks for the learner. Clear roles keep a fast brainstorm from turning into a standoff.
Ground rules we agree on first
A few simple rules keep a brainstorm honest: all ideas are welcome and judgment comes later, build on ideas instead of blocking them, the learner’s problem wins ties, and nothing is decided until it’s written down.
Five ways we move ideas forward.
Here’s the fun part. From the first listen to a tested concept, this is the loop we run on every project, each stage with practical tactics and the tools we collaborate in. It’s a loop, not a line. We get feedback in between each step and keep going until the idea earns its place.
Listen
Get the real problem from people, context, and what already exists, before you solve anything.
View Stage 02Using AI
Bring AI in as a brainstorming partner to expand options, challenge thinking, and draft fast.
View Stage 03Feedback
Get honest, specific reactions early, from peers, stakeholders, and AI, against the bar you set.
View Stage 04Testing
Put a rough version in front of real learners and watch. Let evidence settle the debate.
View Stage 05Concepts
Shape what survived into a clear concept others can react to, build on, or greenlight.
ViewListen first — to people, problems, and context.
Every good project starts with listening. We talk to the people we’re designing for, dig into where they really struggle, and look hard at what already exists. Ask questions, don’t make assumptions. Solve the real problem, not the one you guessed.
Talk to real people
A few honest conversations with learners and stakeholders beat a month of guessing. Ask what’s hard, what they’ve tried, and what good would feel like.
Map the current state
What’s already out there? The old course, the workaround, the doc nobody reads. Knowing today’s reality shows you exactly where the gap is.
Capture it in the open
Put the quotes, pain points, and notes on one shared board, where the whole team can see the same evidence and cluster the patterns together.
Claude Find the themes in your raw notes
Here are my notes from [interviews / surveys / support tickets]: [paste everything, messy is fine] Pull out the 4–6 recurring themes, with a supporting quote for each. Note where people disagree, flag what surprised you, and list the 3 problems worth solving first — and why.
Why it works: you dump the raw input and ask AI to cluster it into themes with evidence — turning a pile of notes into a clear, shareable picture of the problem.
Bring AI in as a brainstorming partner.
AI is the teammate who never runs out of ideas. We use it to widen the options, challenge our thinking, and get from blank page to rough draft in minutes. Then we bring the best ideas back to the team.
Expand the options
Ask for twenty directions, not one. AI is great at quantity. It throws out angles you’d never reach alone, so you actually have choices to pick from.
Challenge your thinking
Have it argue the other side, play a skeptical learner, or poke holes in your favorite idea. Better to face the hard questions here than in the room.
Draft at speed
Outlines, scripts, examples, activities, names. Get a rough version fast so the team spends its energy judging and improving, not starting.
Claude Run a divergent brainstorm
We’re solving this problem: [the problem, the learner, the goal]. Give me 15 distinctly different ideas — mix safe, bold, and slightly absurd. For each: a one-line pitch and who it’s best for. Then group them into 3 themes and tell me which 3 you’d prototype first, and what assumption each one is betting on.
Why it works: you ask for range before judgment, then let AI cluster and rank — so you leave with options and a point of view, not just a longer list.
Get honest feedback early and often.
Ideas get better when they meet other people. We share rough work before we’re attached to it, ask for specific reactions against a clear bar, and treat every note as fuel for the next pass. Get feedback in between each step.
Share it rough
Show the sketch, not the masterpiece. Rough work invites real input. A polished draft just gets a nod, and it’s too late to change anyway.
Critique against the bar
Point feedback at the goal we agreed on. “Does this help the learner do X?” gets you further than “do you like it?”
Make it safe to be honest
Separate the idea from the person, ask for the problem before the fix, and thank people for the hard notes. Honesty is a habit you build.
Claude Pressure-test a draft before you share it
Here’s our goal and bar for “great”: [goal + success signals] Here’s the draft / concept: [paste or describe] Act as three reviewers: a target learner, a skeptical stakeholder, and an accessibility reviewer. For each, give the top reaction, what’s unclear or missing, and one specific fix. End with the single highest-impact change to make first.
Why it works: a dry run through three perspectives catches the obvious problems privately — so the feedback you gather from real people goes deeper.
Test concepts with real learners.
Opinions are cheap. Evidence is gold. We put a rough version in front of the people it’s for, give them a real task, and watch what happens. A few quick tests settle debates that a hundred meetings can’t.
Prototype to learn
Build the cheapest thing that answers your question. A sketch, a clickable mockup, a one-screen demo. It’s there to teach you, not to ship.
Watch, don’t pitch
Give people a task and stay quiet. Where they hesitate, misread, or give up tells you more than any answer to “did you like it?”
Test the riskiest bet
Every concept rests on an assumption. Find the one that would hurt most if it’s wrong, and test that first, before you build around it.
Claude Design a quick test in 10 minutes
Concept: [describe it]. Goal: [what success looks like]. The assumption I’m most worried about: [the risky bet]. Design a lightweight test I can run this week: what to put in front of learners, the exact task to give them, what to watch for, and the signal that would tell me I’m wrong. Keep it to 5 participants.
Why it works: you name the risky assumption and let AI shape a small, fast test around it — so you get real evidence before you over-invest.
Shape what survives into a clear concept.
After listening, brainstorming, feedback, and testing, we know what works. Now we package it. A concept others can react to, build on, or greenlight. Clear enough to share, still rough enough to keep evolving.
Tell the story
Lead with the problem, the insight, and the idea. Then the evidence. People back a concept they understand and believe, not a feature list.
Show, don’t just tell
A sketch, a mockup, a 30-second demo. One thing people can see and react to beats three paragraphs describing it.
Make the next step obvious
End with what you’re asking for. A decision, a budget, a build. A concept without a clear ask quietly stalls.
Claude Turn your findings into a one-page concept
Here’s what we learned and what we tested: [paste notes, test results, the chosen idea] Draft a one-page concept brief: the problem, who it’s for, the idea in 2–3 sentences, what we learned from testing, what we’re still unsure about, and the specific decision we’re asking for next. Keep it skimmable — headings and short lines.
Why it works: you hand over the messy raw material and ask AI to shape it into a tight, decision-ready brief — the artifact that moves the project forward.
Apps to collaborate
Where we brainstorm together.
These are the tools we love for thinking out loud as a team. A shared canvas in Miro, design and prototyping in Figma, and AI as a partner the whole way. The yellow ★ marks a Nick’s Pick. More in the full list on CoolAppsforLearning.com.
Our home base for brainstorming — an infinite canvas for sticky notes, clustering, journey maps, and workshops where the whole team thinks together in real time.
Try Miro ↗Where concepts become clickable. Wireframe, design, and build interactive prototypes together — then put them in front of learners to test before you build for real.
Try Figma ↗Figma’s lightweight whiteboard — fast collaborative diagrams, affinity mapping, dot-voting, and workshop templates for getting a group from many ideas to a few.
Try FigJam ↗Our default AI collaborator. Strong at long-form reasoning, expanding options, pressure-testing ideas, and building interactive artifacts you can react to right in the chat.
Try Claude ↗The versatile all-rounder for brainstorming, drafting, and analysis — and a great second opinion to run the same prompt past and compare against Claude.
Try ChatGPT ↗Upload your interviews, notes, and sources and get grounded summaries, Q&A, and an audio overview — ideal for the listen stage when you’re making sense of input.
Try NotebookLM ↗Record a quick walkthrough of a concept and let people react on their own time — perfect for gathering feedback across time zones without another meeting.
Try Loom ↗Turn a concept into a polished deck, doc, or one-page site in minutes — a fast way to package what survived testing into something you can share and pitch.
Try Gamma ↗More from the series
Additional notebooks
More visual notebooks from Nick Floro and Sealworks — curated, hand-picked, and refreshed regularly to help you design, build, and ship.
Mobile Apps for Learning
A visual notebook of the mobile tools that change how you learn and work — AI assistants, note-taking, collaboration, meetings, annotation, and content creation.
Visit ↗Cool Apps for Learning
The flagship list — 180+ tools across 22 categories that Nick and the Sealworks team reach for every day. Updated monthly.
Visit ↗Prototyping for Learning
A hands-on field guide to prototyping — why it matters, a simple repeatable process, and the tools we use to test ideas before a single line of code gets written.
Visit ↗AI for Learning
The newest notebook in the series — learn, explore, play, and understand how to put AI to work in learning, from first concept all the way to launch.
Visit ↗
Got an idea?Let’s talk.
Whether you’re kicking off a new learning project or rethinking one that’s stuck, I’d love to help you brainstorm it. Coffee chats welcome.
Nick Floro
Sealworks Interactive Studios
Co-founder & Chief Learning Architect. 34+ years turning ideas into prototypes, courses, apps, and platforms — from startups to Fortune 500s, reaching millions of learners every year.