Introduction

Did you ever want to be inspired like an artist, full of ideas like an engineer or creative like a designer? Did you read of great inventors like da Vinci, Edison, Jobs or Musk? You can now follow their attitude and create the next big idea in your team, in your company, or just for yourself! The approach to do so is to use creative card decks, with which you can create novel thoughts on your own or inspire others in brainstorming sessions and workshops. They are easy to use, not expensive, and are worth a try for every creative.

Creative Card Decks are a method in the field of ideation, inspiration and innovation. With a bunch of paper-based cards they are haptic and playful tools to generate ideas, to train creativity, and to solve ideation blockades. They can be the wow-effect of a workshop, the secret trick for the next level idea or part of your design thinking toolset.

Now, when searching for such innovation-oriented ideation card decks, there are 2 difficulties: they are not easy to find and concurrently, if searched extensively, there are numerous sets available, which makes it hard to choose one. The following list should help on both: get an overview of the most promising creative card decks and receive some support for decision making.

Brainstorm Cards

This deck of 52 cards is divided into 4 trends: Regulation Trends, Market Trends, Technology Trends, and Customer Trends. The usage is very simple: people facing an innovation challenge or problem just take a card and can directly ideate. The instructions recommend to brainstorm for 20 minutes and then discuss the results in a team to further develop the ideas. Each card takes a successful company as starting point and asks a question following a key character trait of this company. Examples for the cards in the 4 categories are:

What if direct advertising was forbidden? (Costco as example of regulation trends)

What if your customers moved to a new country every week? (Revolut as example of market trends)

What if you delivered an augmented reality experience? (Pokemon Go as example of technology trends)

What if your customers demanded that everything be made locally? (3D Hubs as example of consumer trend)

The mode of application is easy and if the four categories fit roughly the intent of your project or problem, the card set is worth a try. The deck was developed by the Board of Innovation, a business design and innovation strategy firm originated in Antwerp, Belgium. Besides this (and of course their services), they also offer other interesting tools in the field of inspiration and innovation, some of them to download.

Prerequisite: none

52 cards, 6x9cm

Application: have a challenge or problem, select a card, ideate

Language: English

Link: https://www.boardofinnovation.com/tools/brainstorm-cards/

Inspiration Wild Cards

This deck contains 55 cards, from which 5 cards are basic rules and information, and the main 50 cards are divided into 5 categories with 10 cards each. The rule is very simple: if you have a scope or innovation problem or use case, take a random card (or a card from a preferred category), think about its scenario or character and ideate. Examples for the cards in the five categories are:

Luxuriousness: If you would have as much money as possible for your project, what would you do with it? What would you integrate as expensive material, feature or extra? (Super Forces)

Outer Space: Imagine your product is used in outer space. Astronauts use it in a place without gravity. With gloves. On a space station. Or maybe on the moon. What happens? (Fiction Laws)

Grandfather: Let your product be in the use of an old person. With huge experience. And worries. And reduced physiology. And wisdom. What would happen? (Super Heroes)

Band: Imagine a heavy badass motherf**king band. How could the members make use of an amplified version of your product? To start the next moshpit or to create the next smash hit? (Stereotypes)

Feature Fail: What if your product had an epic fail in its main feature? How would it look like then? How would people use it and how would they fail? (Nightmares)

The cards are nice to handle as they are four times bigger than a regular game card deck. You can read at least the headline also from a bit farer away. The illustrative drawings add a visual component, so besides the headline and text the inspiration is even richer. The set can be used by one person, as workshop method, or as brainstorming material. It’s recommended to combine both: perform it alone at first and then also take it to a group exercise. As the participants can choose the category and also skip a card if it does not fit, the application is very flexible and will produce interesting, funny, maybe absurd results. But this is the secret of the game — even crazy ideas can deliver new helpful thoughts for the original problem. The website with some example cards gives a first impression. The deck can be purchased via the publisher or book stores.

Disclaimer: The set was developed and designed by the author of this article and was published in 2020.

Prerequisite: none

55 cards, 12x18cm

Application: have a question or use case, take a card, ideate

Language: English or German, one set for each language available

Link: www.inspirationwildcards.com, ISBN 978–3–8325–5179–7 (English), ISBN 978–3–8325–5178–0 (German)

Don’t/Do This Game

This card set with 156 cards creates a task to solve and a limiting rule set in addition. The idea is to take 3 cards which create a problem to solve and 3 more which limit the solution space. The six cards together thus create a need for creativity. Hence, the approach is eligible for situations without a concrete problem or use case. The rule to play this game is to take 3 “Do” cards and in addition 3 “Don’t” cards, like in this example:

Do: Create clothing that is also a landmark | For two persons | To become more productive

Don’t: Don’t use straight shapes | Don’t make the size static | Don’t use non-recyclable material

With random tasks like this, the creativity of one, two or more persons playing this game shall be stimulated. The game is very handy and because 3x3 cards are combined, the possibilities are numerous. The disadvantage is that instead of being applicable to a specific issue or challenge, it’s creating a random challenge. So, it’s rather a learning tool for design thinking or an ideation exercise. The cards have the size of a standard card game and are well designed in the bold colors black, white and pink. Donald Roos, a Dutch designer and teacher at the Royal Academy of Art in the Netherlands developed this method and published it in 2018.

Prerequisite: none

156 Cards, 6x9cm

Application: combine 2 cards, ideate

Language: English

Link: https://www.bispublishers.com/dont-do-this-game.html, ISBN 978 90 6369 484 5

The Tarot Cards of Tech

This card deck contains 12 cards in the three categories Scale and Disruption, Usage and Equity and Access. It can be used for an innovation task, where a card adds a constraint to this task. Examples for the cards are:

The Big Bad Wolf: What could a “bad actor” do with your product?

The Smash Hit: What happens when 100 million people use your product?

The Forgotten: When you picture your user base, who is forgotten?

You can see the cards on the website or download a PDF after registering with an E-mail address. The cards are beautiful in design and the online version is nicely animated in addition. They also seem to be available as paper cards. The Seattle-based design agency Artefact published the Tarot Cards of Tech in 2018.

Prerequisite: none

12 Cards, digital (or paper)

Application: have a question, take a card, ideate

Language: English

Link: http://tarotcardsoftech.artefactgroup.com/ (download PDF via contact details)

Creative Chemistry Card Kit

This card deck is actually three decks. The first set contains 140 creative chemistry cards (divided in 13 categories), the second 76 profiling and character cards and the third 17 sustainable development goals (as defined by the United Nations). Each creative chemistry card from the first set contains a topic and one big letter as abbreviation. The card decks can be used in several modes: in Story Telling one character card profiles a person and three chemistry cards are used as conversation starter. In Personal Pyramid six cards are used as definition of a person, four additional cards define areas to work on in the future. Other modes are Atomic Brand Model, Sustainable Development Goals and Quickplay (Inflict Inspiration), where a random picked card serves as inspiration trigger. Examples in the three categories are:

Photography. Medicine. Tattoo. (creative chemistry)

I like to share. I am curious. (character)

No Poverty (sustainable development goal)

The deck is based on the Creative Chemistry Table, developed at the end of the 1990es by Jan Van Mol in Belgium when he founded the Ad!dict Creative Lab organization. It can be purchased via the website of the addictlab.

Prerequisite: none

233 Cards, 3 sets

Application: 7 different modes, including a quickplay mode

Language: English

Link: https://addictlab.com/shop/10

Trigger Ideation Cards

These “What if” card sets are first of all huge in number. In the category Ideation alone there are 13 different decks with 60 cards per deck. Furthermore, there are other categories like Reflection Cards or Trainings with even more cards. In the category Ideation, the 13 decks are about brand strategy, business design, campaigns, conversion, graphic, human-centric, innovation, machine-learning, naming, planet-centric, serendipity, storytelling and service design. Here are some examples from the decks:

What if you used gamification mechanisms? (innovation deck)

What if the name was the benefit? (naming deck)

What if the idea supported outsiders? (human-centric deck)

What if you contributed to a better society? (brand strategy deck)

What if you did a very sci-fi solution? (serendipity deck)

The cards are designed with nice colors and illustrations. The application is simple and the possibilities are numerous. As there are so many decks, they can be used in several different phases of a project or by several departments. The decks are developed by the Barcelona-based company Triggers. Spin-off distributors exist in Russia and Mexico.

Prerequisite: none

13 ideation cards decks with 60 cards per deck, 780 cards in total, 12x8cm

Application: define the challenge, pick a card and read aloud, generate ideas on the trigger; also available: Trigger Go — the digital solution

Language: Spanish, English, Russian

Link: https://www.trytriggers.com/shop-our-tools

Creative card decks in general

Card decks are an interesting method when it comes to inspiration and creativity. For a known task in product development, they can bring in unexpected triggers, uncommon thoughts or absurd scenarios. This is part of their mechanism — they push people beyond thought boundaries. Sometimes they create good ideas quite directly, sometimes they create crazy ideas on detours, then again they just produce nonsense. At least, it’s fun to work with them — no matter if you use them on your own or in a group setting. If you divide an ideation process in phases (like the 3 phases of inspiration), they suit later stages of ideation, where the more obvious ideas have been expressed and where disruptive, crazy, weirder ideas are requested. Card decks are useful for a lot of person groups in several processes and tasks — of course some sets have a specific domain or process focus, but most are quite versatile to use. Some exemplary target groups are:

• Designers
• Engineers
• Product Managers
• Developers
• Innovation Managers
• Scientists
• other creative working people, developing products, services and strategies or are part of such processes

Longer List of Card Decks

If the short list of five decks has not been enough for you: out there are a lot of options, some online, some offline, some available, some sold out. This is the long list as a result of a research on inspirational, creative card decks (contains also the 6 sets described above):

· Brainstorm Cards (Board of Innovation, 52 digital English cards in 4 categories: regulation trends, market trends, technology trends, customer trends; free download via contact details or 20€ for physical deck)

· Creative Chemistry Card Set (Add!ct Lab, 150 discipline cards, 76 character cards, 17 sustainable cards; 150€)

· Don’t/Do This — Game (Donals Roos & BIS Publishers, 156 English cards: combine 3 “Do” cards and 3 “Don’t” cards and come up with a solution for this project; 15€)

· Innovate like… (Sven Schimpf & Fraunhofer Verlag, 31 cards in German: How would historical heroes of innovation ideate? 39€)

· Inspiration Wild Cards (Jens Mühlstedt & Logos Verlag, 58 English or German cards in 5 categories: super forces, fiction laws, super heroes, stereotypes and nightmares; 39,80€)

· Intùiti Creative Cards (Matteo di Pascale & Sefirot Srl, 78 English or Italian cards with 22 primary and 56 secondary triggers; 59€)

· Mental Notes (50 cards, sold out)

· Myndset Cards (sold out)

· Pitch Cards (William Roy, 54 English method cards and 54 game cards to become a better speaker; 27€)

· Questions & Empathy (Sub Rosa, 56 cards to enable empathic thinking, 25€)

· Trigger Cards (Triggers, 14 card decks with ca. 68 English cards each; 49€ each)

· The Tarot Cards of Tech (Artefact, 12 English cards: scale and disruption, usage, equity and access; download PDF via contact details)

There is also another article describing several further card decks more in the field of innovation: https://www.disruptorleague.com/blog/2018/06/21/10-more-amazing-innovation-design-card-decks/.

Longest List of Card Decks

Besides all this, an Online Library of Card Decks contains 46 further card decks for ideation and many more in categories like diagnose, learn, play and present — it is curated by Stephanie Gioia and can be found at deckaholic.com.

If you know any other card deck which you miss in this article, please put it in the comments.