Pokémonisation

The current craze for Pokémon Go, the augmented reality smartphone game, exemplifies how computer code becomes a piece of conceptual art, and the app akin to a piece of installation art, where the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. Moreover, based on the smartphone's geolocation system (GPS), the game is a social interactive experience where the players chase virtual pocket monsters in nearby real world locations through the smartphone's camera lens. Also, through player interaction, the cartoony graphic art on the smartphone's screen becomes performance art. Or, to paraphrase Sol Le Witt's definition of conceptual art, Pokémon Go (the idea) becomes a smartphone app (a machine) that makes the art. In other words, Pokémon Go is a superimposed idea on the real world (object or landscape) which, through the lens of the smartphone, creates augmented reality. But does Pokémon Go enhance users' "ways of seeing", or is it just art installation made fun representing another global game scenario where players are mere consumers?

Mission: Ideation

Designing is a social and purposeful activity geared towards improving human conditions and situations, material and immaterial. Often this is seen as problem solving. But ideation goes beyond the mere utilitarian or functional. Ideation involves speculation and risk taking too, and has a sense of vision as well as mission to help solve many of the challenges of everyday life, small and large, locally and globally. In this pursuit, ideators are driven by a desire to create new products, systems or services, or to improve existing ones. But ideas must be communicated effectively to reach their fruition. Ideas, like seeds, aren't enough - they have to be nurtured. Hence the need for ideators to become confident in the way they communicate ideas, in which skills in the use of ideation tools play a part..