Talking or drawing aloud

People who talk out loud to think through their maths problems are able to solve them faster and have more chance of getting the right answer, research in educational psychology has found. The research, published in he Journal of Research in Educational Psychology, found that discussing problems was a smart way to learn. Also, that drawing or making a pictorial representation relating to the problem contributed to its solution. In short, talking aloud or drawing the problems is closely related to the success in problems solution. The findings may fly in the face of old-fashioned theory of problem-solving in silence; classrooms should be full of noise of students tackling their problems out loud. So learning and teaching maths, then, could learn from design ideation and the studio experience!

Safety in ideas

It's the business of designers to challenge convention from time to time. But when we do this, we risk alienating those with a vested interest in maintaining tradition. And often too, we just can't tell if a new idea is a stroke of genius or a stupid notion until we have begun to try it out. So we have to take that risk. It takes courage to explore different ideas, approaches and solutions. But designers owe it to themselves to ideate and experiment. And as long as we keep reaching for new ideas and possibilities we are likely to find one that works.

Ideation the Hadid way

Zaha Hadid's Maxxi museum of contemporary art in Rome is completed. The script-driven architecture began as a jagged scribble on a page of lined notepaper turning into an artwork in acrylic paint. And that, in turn, spawned hundreds of pages of computer-generated images using advanced design techniques like scripting (in Mel Script or Rhino Script) and parametric modelling (with tools like GC or DP). Hadid describes the architecture as "porous, immersive, a field space, the notion of drift". The idea of architecture whose masses and spaces drift, says Hadid, has been alien to architecture but is well understood in art. But connections between architecture and art follow a long tradtion. What Hadid is proposing is a different kind of architectural form in the digital age, what her office hails as parametricism, or the great new style after modernism.

Committed to ideas

Do ideas demand definitions, structures, and commitments? But once our ideas are defined, structured and committed, we might feel caged, trapped, or limited. Yet if we want to realise our ideas we have to take them seriously: In ideas start responsibility!

Ideation as essay

Design is a hybrid medium reflected in how designers employ ideas from both fiction and reality. This suggests that the designer, in articulating ideas in written form, becomes an essayist whose narrative veers in and out of experiential knowledge framed within a fiction. The literary form of design ideation, then, is the essay rather than the hard science paper.

Community of ideas

Within the general framework of ideation, where intuition, information and matter converge, we find, with the emergence of new knowledge and cross-pollination of ideas from design and science, a community of ideas where there is not only variety of ideas, and rivalry between them, but also awareness and respect of how each idea fits into that community.

Idea prototyping

Prototyping, or modelling design ideas is evolving. Developing from the tradition of the crafts, prototyping in the digital age with the aid of modelling software can now be seen as both generative and dynamic, offering new ways of exploring and communicating feasibility of ideas, and whether in form or appearance (aesthetic model), or function (proof of concept) . The distinctions between analogue and digital idea prototyping, or the physical and virtual are dissolving to the point where they have now become outmoded terms in design ideation.

Ideation in the digital age

The digital age urges us to move fast forward. But technology does not neccessarily cut us off from traditional ideation tools such as pencil and paper that make for a gentler and more comfortable step into the future.

Ideation and listening skills

A sometimes overlooked or underestimated part of the ideation process is the designer's listening skills. By listening to and understanding the client's reasoning behind the design brief and how it was arrived at designers are in a better position to make sense of the client's needs and desires and respond in a language that is both imaginative and meaningful using an appropriate range of ideation tools. In short, designers can engage their imagination by taking the time to listen.

Ideas in waiting

Some ideas are ideas in waiting. They are in the grey zone between fiction and reality. We turn them into reality when we have the technological means to realise them. But the social, economic, and ethical conditions must be right too.

Design ideation as craft

Although ideas may occur serendipitously, at any time, and in many different places, developing and communicating ideas can be seen as craft which involves skilful use of ideation tools such as words, sketching, physical and digital modelling.

Computer-aided ideation (CAI)

Design computing now goes well beyond documentation and production needs. It includes innovation, simulation and digital fabrication that expands rather than reduces designers' creative options. In short, digital technology promotes experimentation and discovery, what I call Computer-aided ideation, CAI (Jonson 2005).

Designers who focus on innovation through analogue tools alone highlight knowledge and skills of computing technologies. For example: 'Computers arrived too late for me. I don't believe I can use them to their potential. The computer pushes for a rigour that is hard to include in research development; it can't accommodate the doubts that are necessary, and this can be difficult for creativity. I see the computer as another instrument complimentary to sketches, models, reading and so on - not an exclusive way of working'. Alvaro Siza, RIBA Royal Gold Medal 2009.

Ideation logic

There can be logic in ideation, even if it arrives by a most illogical route.

Is there method in design ideation?

Whereas the "Aha!", or "Eureka!" moment may be thought of as a subconscious activity, design ideation, as an integrated whole of generating, developing and communicating ideas, might suggest strategic thinking and not just processes out of our conscious control. Design ideation as strategy, then, might be regarded as a form of experimental science, a series of actions or procedure that can be tested and refined and categorised, classified, defined or codified and so built into methodology.

So for example, TRIZ is a model for generating ideas that relies on the study of the patterns of problems and solutions. Based on logic and data, not on the spontaneous and intuitive creativity of individuals or groups, the effectiveness of TRIZ, is, however, disputed, particularly for non-engineering fields.

Design ideation, then, cannot be regarded as a single, sharply defined methodology; there are many different tools, processes, and philosophies of ideation. See also blog January 16.

Preconceived ideas?

By asking ourselves with some degree of humility whether that which we perceive to be so is simply what we have preprogrammed our minds to see, we may find that the problems we perceive are in fact nothing more than preconceived ideas. The danger, of course, is that real issues may be ignored.

So how do we deal with real issues? Albert Einstein famoulsy observed that problems can’t be solved by the same level of thinking that created them in the first place. Thinking about a situation in the wrong way can literally condemn us to relive the same experiences over and over again. Little will change until we change our thinking. Ideation, then, suggests change in our thinking about a situation. And from change in our thinking new ideas emerge that challenge the past.