Ideation refinement

Ideas appear in many guises, some like a flash to be quickly made into something, others to develop slowly, worked, reworked, changed, modified or abandoned. In developing an idea to the stage where it is more likely to be endorsed than rejected, the idea may go through a process of refinement or clarification. Let's for a moment imagine such a process of idea refinement where the "raw" idea is made "pure" through applying the additive colour system. That is, RGB, the system's three primary colours, is perceived as coloured light made white. Imagine, then, that the red colour would take out any unethical or corrupting aspect of the idea, the green colour any unsustainable or harmful component, and the blue colour any disagreeable or ugly element of the idea. The idea, then, in this thought experiment to illustrate the complexity of ideation, is perceived as a broad spectrum light source shown as white light, or a refined idea. That is, a pure idea, free of any contaminant - as pure as natural sunlight.

Multisensory ideation

Designers use a range of tools to visualise their ideas. In this, traditional arts and crafts methods remain powerful means for expressing and developing ideas and concepts, perhaps even more so when designers and consumers alike seek out tactility and signs of a human touch as a counter to life lived increasingly impacted by digitisation, automation and globalisation. Indeed, physical interaction with things, or "thinking with the hands" can stimulate ideation (Mies van der Rohe, whose practice and teaching of architecture were influenced by his early training as a stonemason, brought a load of bricks to the classroom so the students could experience the material first-hand) . For comparison, consider a game of Chess: players naturally touch and move their pieces across the chess board. If thinking were simply done "in the head", what's the purpose of these physical moves? Thinking with the hands, then, as in manipulating materials, say, to build a physical model, becomes an ideation tool for problem solving. In other words, the capacity to ideate depends not just on cognitive ability, or abstract thinking, but on material things and people around us. Such a multisensory approach to ideation seems most apt when considering sustainabble production for a harmonious future with people and the planet.