The rule. Put your own concepts on the wall before you ask a model for any, then prompt for the directions the wall is missing.
Why. Design fixation is "blind adherence to a set of ideas or concepts limiting the output of conceptual design" (Jansson & Smith, 1991, as cited in Wadinambiarachchi et al., 2024). Generative tools feed it. In a CHI 2024 experiment, 60 people sketched chatbot avatars after seeing one example; those using Midjourney fixated more on it and "produced fewer ideas, with less variety and lower originality" than a no-support baseline (Wadinambiarachchi et al., 2024). Across a team, the effect compounds: in five experiments, ChatGPT-assisted brainstorming produced narrower idea sets, with the drop in diversity significant in 37 of 45 comparisons (Meincke et al., 2025; Needleman, 2025). In creative writing, AI ideas made individual stories more creative and the stories more similar to each other (Doshi & Hauser, 2024).
None of these studies tested sequencing directly. Sketching first is the practice that follows from them: the team's own concepts become the baseline, and the model is asked to extend the set instead of setting it.
Seen in the wild. FigJam AI can work on ideas people already wrote: it sorts a selection of stickies by theme and summarizes them (Figma, n.d.).