Idea Marinater — combine words to find an idea

Throw random words onto a canvas, collide them, and write down what the collision suggests. It's a tool for getting unstuck when you have to brainstorm alone. No account, no collaborators.

  1. 1. Make a word
  2. 2. Picture it
  3. 3. Give it a use

Go round these three as many times as you like — you are not meant to finish one word before making the next.

1. Make a word

Aim for words you have never heard.

Draw words

Use what you picked

2. Picture it

Arrange them, look at them, and let a picture form.

Draw some words under “1. Make a word” to begin. Drag them around; pick two and fuse them.

3. Give it a use

What is it? When would it be used? Who would feel what about it?

An example, if nothing comes to mind

Pick a reading you'd actually use, or one you'd throw away. Don't decide which yet — just see what the words can be made to mean.

Fire Extinguisher Almanac

Actually useful
A book cataloguing every fire extinguisher model sold in the country, with the inspection-tag colors explained and a page on which type goes with which kind of fire. The sort of thing a facilities manager keeps on a shelf.
Who cares
An almanac of extinguishers that have never once been discharged. Every entry looks the same: red, full, untouched. Nothing about it is memorable, and nothing about it needs to be.
Completely pointless
An almanac that tracks not the extinguisher but the dust settling on top of it, year by year, plotted like a growth chart. Technically data. Useful to absolutely no one.

Drag a word onto the bin to delete it, or press Delete with it focused. Your canvas is kept in this browser, so it is still here when you come back.

This tool started from the thinking techniques in 藤原麻里菜, 『考える術』[Ad]. It implements the mechanics, with our own decisions on top; the book is where the thinking is.

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When this helps

Marketer or planner

You need a stack of pitch ideas before a meeting, and your head has gone completely blank.

Draw ten subject words, smash each one into an output word, and keep only the combinations that snag on something.

Solo builder or indie developer

You want to build something, but you can't land on what.

Add an output word — app, gadget, field guide — to a subject you already care about, until the pairing turns into a shape you can picture building.

Writer or editor

Your angle keeps coming out the same way every time.

Deliberately collide a modifier you'd never normally reach for against a noun, and see what the mismatch forces you to notice.

Student or researcher

You're stuck before you've even picked a topic.

Swap the subject. The same theme becomes a different question the moment you ask "for whom" instead.

FAQ

What is this based on?
The starting point is a technique from Marina Fujiwara's book 『考える術 —— 人と違うことが次々ひらめくすごい思考ワザ71』 (roughly, "The Art of Thinking: 71 techniques for having ideas nobody else has"), which has not been published in English. Read the book for the thinking behind the technique — what's built here is the mechanism, with nemawashitools' own choices layered on top of it.
I can't think of anything. Any tips?
Stop looking for a combination that already makes sense. Generate a large number of unfamiliar-sounding pairs first, and only afterward force yourself to answer "what would that even be?" — roughly, badly, off the top of your head. Also: put a timer on it. Thirty minutes to an hour produces better ideas than brainstorming without a stopping point.
Can I still move words after fusing them into a group?
Yes. Drag a word inside a group and it reorders within the group. Drag the group's own frame and the whole thing moves together, keeping the words' positions relative to each other. Press "Break apart" to split a group back into separate words.
Is what I write down saved anywhere?
The canvas is saved in your browser's local storage, so it's still there if you reopen the page in the same browser. Clearing your browser's data erases it, and it doesn't carry over to another device. To keep something, use the "Download" button under the canvas to export it as a Markdown file.
What's in the downloaded file?
Every word on the canvas, plus anything you wrote about it. Words you annotated and words you didn't are listed separately. The file is built entirely in your browser — nothing is ever sent to a server. This tool is meant to get you to a pile of raw material, not a finished pitch; do the narrowing and polishing on the exported file, wherever you normally work.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes. Tap a word to select it, and drag it directly with no long-press required. The screen is smaller, so drawing too many words at once makes them overlap — drawing fewer at a time works better there.

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