Computational ideators

A large part of ideation, or any creative activity is to feel you're playing. Because design is driven by passion, and you have to feel you just have to do it. In this pursuit, ideators have a wide range of tools at their disposal, including computers mirroring real design situations in time and space. This may suggest the emergence of computational ideators. But entering cyberspace doesn't mean that sketching, model making or prototyping using paper, card, foam or clay have become redundant. Rather, digital and analogue ideation tools compliment each other, and sometimes the digital and the analogue workflow converge, for example, when clay models are scanned and further developed in 3D CAD. So the digital-analogue divide is a false one; the computer has become as necessary for the ideation process as the drawing board or the toolkit for hands-on modelling. But, with design being an inherently interdisciplinary activity, computational ideators may have an advantage when communicating ideas to a wider audience, be they end users, engineers or marketing professionals.