Quiet for ideas

 The 'Aha!' or 'Eureka' moment is a common experience of sudden discovery, inspiration, or insight. Some research describes the Aha! effect as a memory advantage, but it is difficult to know in advance under what circumstances the Aha! moment happens. Yet there are ways to prepare the ground for fertile idea generation, as part of finding or improving a problem-solving strategy. For example, gaining as much knowledge and experience as possible, both general and specific, in that "things add up" over time. That is, compounded life experience has an impact on ideation. Aha! moments, then, are not as random as they seem, and can be helped by specific conditions. For example, ideas tend to pop up when our minds are quiet and our consciousness is at rest. Silence and solitude, then, are beneficial for nurturing ideation. Moreover, internal focus often goes hand in hand with mind wandering or daydreaming—another trigger for insights. Indeed insights may happen specifically when we are not actively making an effort to choose what to do. In contrast, negative emotions or being anxious create a lot of “noise” in the brain, drowning out the space for insight. 'Brain silencing' rather than ''brainstorming', or taking a break from thinking to unravel unconsicous thought about an issue may then actually increase the chances of Aha! moments.

Ruskin inspires

"From the most insignificant circumstance, — from a bird on a railing, a wooden bridge over a stream, a broken branch, a child in a pinafore, or a waggoner in a frock, does the artist derive amusement, improvement, and speculation.", wrote John Ruskin, the Victorian polymath.(1819-1900). For Ruskin, speculation about principles depended on observation of particularities. He thought visually revelling in stringing together a potentially endless series of associations on an ‘imaginary’ thread. His art was always purposeful, integral to his thinking on all subjects. He worked out and visualised his ideas through drawing. And so Ruskin inspires designers to explore, observe, and speculate (what if?) looking for how things (material culture) can be improved. Indeed from the most insignificant circumstance design ideas spring.

Walk the idea

"We talked to each other, exchanged ideas,” says Erdal Arıkan, the information scientist whose research provided a theoretical breakthrough in 5G technology. “This is the best mode of collaboration for me. I remain independent, and they do whatever they want". At first he presented his idea to US technology firms to see if they had interest in implementing the idea. “I did prepare some slides and sent them, but none of the US companies were really interested in it,” he says. Arıkan takes the blame for failing to ignite their interest. “I was an academic who did not know how to promote an idea. Perhaps I did not believe in the idea that strongly myself." However, Chinese Huawei saw the commercial opportunity in Arıkan's idea and, with large investments, government support and engineering talent, turned it into the basic 5G technology now being rolled out around the world. Source: https://www.wired.com/story/huawei-5g-polar-codes-data-breakthrough/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB

Carry On Ideation

Ideas often come in bunches, like bananas, or like the old joke that you wait ages for one bus, then three come along at once. The reason is that, when waiting for a bus, the bus may run to a timetable but in heavy traffic or disparity in passenger numbers at each stop the timetable is no precise indicator. Indeed it’s this inevitable messiness that disrupts the bus scheduling. Now the scheduling is a linear process and bus operators try to regulate the service accordingly but the reality proves the bus service cannot be run like a clock, that is, delays are mathematically inevitable. And so with ideation. At an abstract level, ideation might be considered a linear process (ideation + artificial intelligence = aideation is working along such lines of inquiry). But designer experience of ideation shows that it is a non-linear, iterative process - unpredictable, even messy and full of surprises and disappointments. And because ideas are propostions, not fully fledged plans it is difficult to tell bad ideas from good ones because the proof is in its realisation, like the proof of the pudding is in the eating. So while ideas fail, this isn't necessarily because most of them began life as bad ideas. Ideation is full of banana skins: You slip, and carry on. And so the crunch is commitment to the idea while seeking and gaining support to make it happen.

Storytelling can make the idea

The new idea must be externalised, that is, communicated to an audience, be it to inspire or win over a colleague, a team or a client. And communicating the idea is essentially about storytelling, which is a skill that can be developed or improved upon. This skill entails a few characteristics, notably the ability to contextualise the idea, that is, to explain, show or demonstrate how the idea fit into the broader vision or picture of things. Another noticeable feature is to make the idea action-oriented, that is, to present the idea so it becomes clear what real difference it can make if, and when realised. And, not least, build trust into your storytelling by not exaggerate the idea to make it seem larger, more important or better than it really is. Because an effective way to undermine the creditbility of an idea is with impressive-sounding, but ultimately unhelpful, boring or meaningless platitudes.

Ideation as knowledge

Ideation can be seen as a creative process embodied in cognition and knowledge of both practical and theoretical nature. Aristotle distinguished between different types of knowledge required to solve problems in three realms. Techne was craft knowledge: learning to use tools and methods to create something. Episteme was scientific knowledge: uncovering the laws of nature and other inviolable facts. Phronesis was akin to ethical judgment: the perspective-taking and wisdom required to make decisions when competing values are in play — when the answer is not absolute, multiple options are possible. The reason that Aristotle made these distinctions is that they require different styles of thinking. But ideators face challenges appearing regularly in all three knowledge areas. That is, there are plenty of techne problems to find practical and effective solutions to a given problem. There are also epistemic challenges, that is, designing serves not only to develop artefacts but is also a means of acquiring genuine knowledge. And firmly in the realm of phronesis, or practical wisdom, the kind of knowledge that is flexible enoguh to adjust initial thoughts to emergent circumstances, and adaptable enough to learn from successes as well as mistakes. Wisdom, a capacity acquired through experience, helps designers to ask penetrating questions, provide insight into the implications of actions, and to advise appropriate courses of action. Wisdom, then, in the realm of problem solving, involves the ability to understand how complex and messy situations hang together, and appropriate actions might be taken.  Phronesis, then, in the context of design, as argued by Halverson and Gomez (2001)* is the ability to walk the talk. Or rather, for ideators, to walk the idea. *https://www.researchgate.net/publication/241616375_Phronesis_and_Design_How_Practical_Wisdom_is_Disclosed_through_Collaborative_Design

Saying no to ideas

 Ideation suggests ways of generating, developing and communicating ideas. but it's not simply an activity of producing as many ideas as possible for any given task, as may be the case with so called "brainstorming" for ideas. That is, ideation is a purposeful and focused process. It is also a decision-making process. But focusing doesn't mean saying yes to any idea that pops up. To focus, as proposed by Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, "means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.". So difficult choices have to be made along the ideation route: Which idea seems the best? The opportunity may never come around again. In conclusion, then, the best course of action for ideators is to say no to ideas that don't excite, speak to their values, or further their design agenda.

Value of handwritten notes and sketches

Know that tools for the hands are tools for the brain. Handwritten notes are a powerful tool for encrypting embodied cognition, that is, the mind is not only connected to the body but that the body influences the mind, and in turn supporting the brain’s capacity for retrieval of information. And secondly, when you take notes by hand, your hands create a robust external memory storage: your notebook. While keyboarding is an important skill too, notably for written communication, keyboarding does not provide the tactile feedback to the brain that contact between pencil or pen and paper does. Researchers have found that note-taking associated with keyboarding involves taking notes verbatim in a way that does not involve processing information, and so have called this “non-generative” note-taking. By contrast, taking notes by hand involves cognitive engagement in summarising, organising, and conceptualising — in short, manipulating and transforming information that leads to deeper understanding. This goes for sketching and drawing too: Leonardo da Vinci wrote: “…the more minutely you describe, the more you will confuse the mind of the reader and the more you will remove him from knowledge of the thing described. Therefore it is necessary to make a drawing ... as well as to describe ...". So creating neurocircuitry for memory and meaning through the hand-brain complex is the key to understanding the value of hand-written notes and sketches. Source: https://theconversation.com/note-taking-by-hand-a-powerful-tool-to-support-memory-144049?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB

Write it down!

It's a truism among ideators yet not always followed. That is, the moment an idea strikes you - the proverbial light bulb or "Aha!" moment, write it down, or sketch it out — no hesitation. Whether on a piece of paper, smartphone, or a Post-it Note, it doesn’t matter. Getting into the habit of noting down each idea also increases the chances of realising it, that is, ideators find that writing down ideas (rather than just thinking about them) improves motivation to take the idea further. Indeed to be motivated we need to make something happen which, in the context of ideation, means capturing the idea jotting the first few words or doing a rough sketch. From there on, it's also important to find uninterrupted time to expand and develop the idea. In other words, idea development needs focusing.

Ideation as a natural process

Frank Lloyd Wright wasn't just an outstanding architect. He was also a colourful character, a self-publicist who was not afraid to speak his mind: “Early in my career...I had to choose between an honest arrogance and a hypercritical humility... I deliberately choose an honest arrogance, and I've never been sorry.” Not surprising, then, Wright's musings are often quoted. For example, his view on ideation suggests a natural formgiving process that improves through practice: “Every idea that is a true idea has a form, and is capable of many forms. The variety of forms of which it is capable determines the value of the idea. So by way of ideas, and your mastery of them in relation to what you are doing, will come your value as an architect to your society and future. That's where you go to school. You can't get it in a university, you can't get it here, you can't get it anywhere except as you love it, love the feeling of it, desire and pursue it. And it doesn't come when you are very young, I think. I believe it comes faster with each experience, and the next is very simple, or more simple, until it becomes quite natural to you to become master of the idea you would express". (Frank Lloyd Wright, Idea and Essence, September 7, 1958).

Mind's eye

It is said that Frank Lloyd Wright was a mind's eye architect *. '[I] conceive the building in the imagination, not on paper but in the mind, thoroughly - before touching paper. Let it live there - gradually taking more definite form before committing it to the draughting board'. So Wright allowed the idea to germinate in his mind until it erupted as an "insight". The big solution, he believed, must emerge first, then design development and detailing could follow. And this without first jotting down his ideas or preliminary sketches in the pages of notebooks (at least, no sketchbooks have survived). Wright, it seems, built up a "narrative" in his mind's eye, a kind of imaginary designerly walk before committing "the story" to paper. Evidence of his design process, which he described as "fleeting", is that once he put pencil to paper, Wright talked as he worked, what appears like "thinking aloud". And on the drafting table, with T-square and a drafting triangel, and surrounded by his Taliesin apprentices, he talked in an undertone that was both directed to his pupils and a preoccupied expression of his thoughts. * Howard, H. 2016. Architecture's Odd Couple. NY and London: Bloomsbury Press.

"I ♥ NY"

Milton Glaser, (1929-2020), the US graphic designer is perhaps best known for the "I ♥ NY" logo which he designed free of charge for a 1977 tourism campaign to promote his home city, amid a crime wave and financial crisis. The logo, using American Typewriter typeface rapidly gained recognition across the world and has been described as the most frequently imitated in history. He came up with the idea while riding in a taxi and scribbled it in red crayon on an envelope, which is now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Glaser later said he was "flabbergasted by what happened to this little, simple nothing of an idea". He studied at New York’s Cooper Union art school but he preferred not to use the term “art” at all: “What I’m suggesting is we eliminate the term art and call everything work,”, Glaser said in 2000.

Ideation and self-talk

Motivational self-talk is commonplace in various sports to boost performance. Could self-talk also apply to ideation as a performing-boosting power? The idea behind self-talk, among athletes, is that by stepping outside their immediate experiences and emotions, and viewing them instead from the detached perspective of a supportive onlooker, performers are allowed to take the fear of failure less personally and to make better decisions. For example, on a practice trial, performing athletes were asked to say out loud some of the internal thoughts they’d had during the performance. This gave each athlete a set of self-talk statements that was personal and relevant to them and, moreover, showed that they did better with second-person ("You") rather than first-person pronouns ("I"). Now to compare the effectiveness of self-talk using first-person or second-person pronouns is difficult as it is open to individual variations. Still by trying out self-talk as part of the ideation process, designers  may find it a useful tool giving a boost to their ideation power, possibly in addition to the practice and experience of "Thinking Aloud", that is, expressing thoughts as they occur, rather than thinking first and then speaking.

Familiarity breeds ideas

'A period of rigorously correct architecture is often followed by one in which the buildings deviate from accepted canons', wrote Steen Eiler Rasmussen giving as example two distinct periods of history: Renaissance and Baroque. Another example would be how Postmodern architecture replaced Modernism in the 1970/80s. Both examples reflect that 'when once we have become familiar with the rules' - here the Renaissance and Modernism respectively, 'the buildings that comply with them become tiresome' (Ibid). New ideas, then, emerge that propose new forms or combinations of forms heralding a new movement or era. However, the two examples also show how the boredom threshold is getting lower among both architects and the general public: The Baroque period lasted around a hundred years whereas Modernism only about half of that. And Post-Modernism, arguably, was over by the 1990s which suggests a higher turnover of "styles" still. In other words, designers are increasingly engaged in employing mannerisms, that is, creating purely visual effects to impress and surprise the spectator, as exemplified in contemporary design by Gehry (Guggenheim Museum Blibao), Hadid (Heydar Aliyev Centre) and Greyson Perry (A House for Essex).
*Rasmussen (1964). Experiencing Architecture. MIT Press.

Ideation and critical thinking

Creativity and critical thinking, as well as communication and collaboration skills, are considered core workplace attributes for the 21st century, and particularly in relation to complex problem solving. Generally speaking, creativity is associated with generating ideas, while critical thinking is associated with judging them. In practice, however, the two are not so easy to separate. That is, creativity without critical judgment tends toward the fanciful or the impractical. At the same time, critical thinking gets short shrift when reduced to making a judgment, since, at its best, critical thinking is also a way of making a contribution. That is, critical thinking is fundamentally creative in the sense that its aim is to produce something new: an insight, an argument, a new synthesis of ideas or information, a new level of understanding. Thus creativity and critical thinking are improved when in symbiotic relationship with one another. This suggests that ideation, as a creative act, benefits from recognising the role of critical thinking in ensuring the value of novel ideas. See also: https://www.gettingsmart.com/2017/11/at-the-intersection-of-creativity-and-critical-thinking/

Pandemic as generator of ideas

As circumstances are changing under the restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic so too must certain ways of living, working and even thinking. For example, rules on social distancing are having an impact on the ways people work and how they travel to work (working from home affects the use of public transport and office space requirements), on the ways people do their shopping (online sales impact distribution and point of sale arrangements) or on the ways education is organised and delivered (online learning impacts the need for traditional teaching and learning spaces). Faced with such challenges to contemporary ways of living and working, designers, through creative questioning (what-ifs), are well placed to help deliver innovative solutions. But attention should be given to the limits to idea communication during a period of social distancing, that is, online communication at the expense of physical presentation and encounters. Or, what is being lost if ideators cannot show, share or collaborate ideas face-to-face?

Ideation and complexity

As the distinctions between the natural world, built environment, and culture and society become increasingly blurry, and as the role of designers expands from dealing with straightforward, simple problems to tackling larger systemic issues, ideation can no longer been seen in simple terms. Indeed complex design problems are often "wicked problems" (to borrow a term from the social policy arena), problems that cannot be addressed by the traditional approach in which problems are defined, analysed and solved in sequential steps. That is, a wicked problem cannot be presented as a linear event but reflects nonlinear dynamics which invites a range of approaches of a collaborative nature that aims at engaging all stakeholders. However, for ideators the collaborative approach reveals another problem in that ideation is not just a creative activity but a competitive one too. That is, in the attempt to solve wicked problems ideators pit competing and sometimes opposing ideas or points of view against each other. The tension between the competitive and collaborative strategy for wicked problem solving may then result in a third strategy, or the authoritative approach whereby the responsibility for problem solving is handed to a few people, be they experts, a jury or a public agency. Or, possibly, a fourth strategy, that is, computer-assisted systems thinking to determine the "best solution" or, at all events the "least bad". Yet whatever strategy, creativity remains at the heart of problem solving.

Inclusive or exclusive ideation?

While there are many influences on 20th century design, when it comes to design intent two positions are noteworthy: "exclusive" and "inclusive". That is to say, exclusivity emphasises pure, simple and abstract shapes whereas inclusivity highlights hybrid, diverse and real forms. In the context of ideation, this may suggest that inclusive ideation is one that sees the design task or problem from local, environmental and societal perspectives, in contrast to exclusive ideation that limits the task to formal or stylistic considerations and often at the expense of an appropriate response to the conditions of the problem. That is, whereas exclusive ideation is presenting grand statements, universal assumptions or prototypical solutions, the inclusive approach is more modest and flexible encouraging multiple readings and interpretations while supporting sustainable and communal values. In other words, inclusive ideation situates the problem in specific societal and cultural contexts balancing practical, environmental and aesthetic concerns.

What is new?

Since King Solomon wrote the statement, 'There’s nothing new under the sun', many advances have taken place in society, but, from the larger perspective of life, and according to the ancient Scripture human nature has remained and always will remain the same. However the statement does not ignore inventions or advances in technology; rather, these innovations do not amount to any basic change in the world. Parmenides, the pre-Socrates philosopher, argues that change is impossible: "whatever is is, and what is not cannot be", a statement that is generally considered one of the first digressions into the philosophical concept of being. In contrast Heraclitus, the ancient cosmologist, holds that "No man ever steps into the same river twice" which is regarded as one of the first digressions into the philosophical concept of becoming. Now the world, from the perspective of ideation, is in ever-present change, flux or becoming. rather than one thing, which is timeless, uniform, and unchanging. Indeed ideation is a mode of becoming and what generates or inspires ideas, or stirs man's imagination and creativity is limitless. However, original ideas require the ability or capacity to break away from traditional ways of thinking or behaviour, which is a challenging task.

Ideation and alone time

The notion of the lone genius emerged in the Enlightenment and continues to fascinate both creative mind and the public at large. However, in an age of interaction, collaboration and participatory design, the lone genius has been reduced to a rather romantic mythical figure. Yet research suggests that alone time, but not isolation can be beneficial for creativity. For example, the US psychologist Gregory Feist has found that personality traits commonly associated with creativity are openness (receptiveness to new thoughts and experiences), self-efficacy (confidence), and autonomy (independence) – which may include “a preference for being alone”. In fact, Feist’s research on both artists and scientists shows that one of the most prominent features of creative people is their lesser interest in socialising. One reason for this is that creatives are likely to spend sustained time alone which allows for the reflection and observation necessary for that creative process. This need also highlights the difference between ideation, which requires sustained attention and deep focus and "brainstorming", that is a decidedly sociable process. But being social also means that when we surround ourselves with others, we are influenced by their opinions and aesthetics. To truly chart our own path or vision, then, we have to be willing to spend time alone, at least for some period of time.

Keeping Up

Design is a fast moving and fast changing activity in contemporary culture. So much so that designers who want to survive let alone staying at the top of their profession must reinvent themselves again and again and again. And to stay ahead of the curve, designers need not only keep up with fashion but make fashion which means to continually devise creative strategies and tactics to vary design production. For example, it's been said that Gehry, the architect, is regularly questioning himself: 'Am I repeating myself' (talk of the "Bilbao Guggenheim effect" is said to make the architect uncomfortable). In such competitive environments ideation is key, that is, it is not enough for designers to produce fabulous ideas but also to communicate them as realisable. To make ideas happen, then, it is increasingly important for designers to be able to translate their initial ideas, from traditional 2D drawings and sketch models to data (digital files) which can be fed into the Building Information Model, BIM (a 3-D, object-oriented, CAD approach for architects and engineers, which can store complete information about a building in a digital format). Indeed today's design process is a "supply chain" of data, from first thoughts to final product/building, including costs, scheduling and maintenance.

Brute ideation

In the 1990s, Rem Koolhaas’s architecture office perfected a workflow referred to as “brute force”: Throw as many designers as possible at a project and make an infinity of models; if you create all possible solutions, one has to be the best. Brute force is now a common practice for larger firms. In the context of the creative arts, moreover, the word "brute" can be associated with "art brut" ("raw art"or "rough art"), or, in the context of architecture with "brutalism" (from Fench "beton brut"). Might the word brute, then, as an adjective be applied to the ideation process in the sense of generating and communicating forcefully a large number of ideas to deal with the problem at hand, or "brute ideation"? Yet such a quantitative approach to idea generation would make sense only as long as it remains a purposeful, focused activity ("problem solving"), in contrast to "brainstorming", which generates lots of random and directionless ideas at one fixed point.

Artificial ideation

Problem-solving is part and parcel of design ideation; how to generate, develop and communicate ideas towards a solution. However, it is known that the same design solutions appear over and over again because designers face the same types of problems over and over again. The fact that problem-solving often shows patterns of similarlity or repetition across industries was observed early by TRIZ, a mehod that evolved in post-war USSR to help finding inventive technical solutions to challenging problems more effectively. Based originally on collecting and analysing thousands of patents, TRIZ has since produced and developed software (algorithm for inventive problem solving) resulting in better understanding of complex management problems and finding effective solutions. This result may suggest a similar approach for ideation. That is, to build an extensive digital data base of design precedents, including, for example, 3D scans of realised buildings that will provide a tool for problem-solving. But although computers are commonly used for general problem-solving, based on generic algorithms, the challenge for ideation by algorithm, or "artifical ideation" is to formulate the actual problem so that the computer is able to understand it (machine learning). So when dealing with "wicked problems", optimal design solutions may still require both algorithm (unambiguous specification) and free-form reflection and lateral thinking.

Digital Corbusier

Le Corbusier, in his polemical book Vers une Architecture (1925) argued for a new way of architectural thinking where housing developed a standard along the lines of industrial mass production. Corbusier's writing was in the context of great need for housing caused by the First World War, and the availability of new and innovative technologies of construction, notably the use of glass, steel and reinforced concrete. In this, Corbusier argued that "a house is a machine for living in", similar to "a steamship is a machine for transport, an airplan a machine for flying in, a motor car a machine for moving in, and a chair a machine for sitting in". These analogies, conceived in the spirit of the machine age, contain an argument for function and comfort - a synthesis of functional and artistic expressions as well as lessons from mathematics and geometry. Now, a century later, the demand for mass-production houses is still with us, and on a global scale: homelessness is estimated at 1bn people. So what has changed? Well, digital design and fabrication technologies, and computational geometries are evolving fast and, given the right market or socio-political conditions, the digital tools are set to improve the capacity to supply not only mass housing but mass customised housing. For example, a 1 bedroom house can be built in 24 hours using 3D concrete printing technology. Interestingly, advancements in computational design was already envisoned by Corbusier when he wrote that modernism was bringing about a new era when a geometric or mathematical order controls all architectural forms, from the smallest pot of cream to the largest structures. Indeed, digital Corbusier, or Vers une Architecture Numerique.