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Originally Posted by MICHAELABICK
I agree that discarding ideas is a terrible idea. One good example of an idea I wish we hadn't discarding was lifting up the whole robot to push down the bridge instead of using a mechanism to do so. While this wouldn't have worked for the bridge, some notable teams used it as a fast way to get over the bump(254, 971, 111, and I'm sure others). Furthermore it allowed them to keep their bumpers low which has both offensive and defensive advantages.
Some notable robots have been created from out of the box ideas. The 71 2002 robot is utterly dominant from what I have heard(even though I wasn't around at that time. The 469 2009 robot was also very dominant while using a very out of the box idea. Thinking creatively is definitely very important in the brainstorming stage.
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Thinking creatively is definitely a critical stage in the design process for FIRST teams. One strategy that I find effective is to try to focus early stage brainstorming to ideas for tasks or actions that a robot can do. How that task is done can be saved for later brainstorming, as ideas can often go through numerous iterations before settling on a final product.
The going over the bump idea that 971 used in 2012 stemmed from trying to find a way to travel anywhere on the field rapidly. Several designs were thrown out and prototyped before we designed the final version.
Fitting the decision to robot task ideas can help shape brainstorming discussions and help team members think creatively at how to accomplish those tasks at the same time.