TikTok for ideation

If you have not used TikTok, you are rapidly becoming the global exception, writes Drew Harwell in the Washington Post*. In five years, the app, once written off as a silly dance-video fad, has become one of the most prominent and technically sophisticated juggernauts on the internet - a phenomenon that has secured an unrivaled grasp on culture and everyday life. TikTok’s website was visited last year more often than Google and its ad revenue is estimated to have tripled this year, to $12 billion. TikTok is a social media app that allows users to create short videos of their own up to 3 minutes long. It's different from other social media platforms because while Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram are primarily focused on sharing images and text, TikTok is all about sharing videos. But more than that. Tiktok has blown up the model of what a social network can be. Silicon Valley taught the world a style of online connectivity built on hand-chosen interests and friendships. TikTok doesn’t care about those. Instead, it unravels for viewers an endless line of videos selected by its algorithm, then learns a viewer’s tastes with every second they watch, pause or scroll. You don’t tell TikTok what you want to see. It tells you: “We’re talking about a platform that’s shaping how a whole generation is learning to perceive the world.”. TikTokers are increasingly using the app as a visual search tool too. Thanks to its gravitational pull on creators and audiences, the app’s videos now encompass practically every topic on earth. TikTok, then, is an app that stimulate creativity. In other words, TikTok can be seen as another ideation tool for generating and communicating ideas. *Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2022/tiktok-popularity/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB

Ideation: Words or images?

'I prefer drawing to talking - drawing is faster and leaves less room for lies', quipped Le Corbusier (1887-1965). Or, Eero Saarinen (1910-61): 'To me, the drawn language is a very revealing language', adding, 'one can see in a few lines whether a man is really an architect'. Although drawing predicates most design disciplines, this is not to say that designers need to be able to draw like an accomplished artist. The freehand sketch, even a scribble or doodle, is often a starting point towards an accomplished design. And when drawing digitally, with a tablet pen, there may be an advantage in that the designer can undo and tweak as much as they like until they are satisfied with a design. However, in the context of ideation, visual or verbal communication are not mutually exclusive. Indeed both visual and verbal modes of idea communication are rhetorical means, that is, ideation belongs to "the art of persuasion". And so what matters in communicating ideas is the relationship between words and images: Words explain, images suggest - or vice versa. Ideation, then, as its most effective, exploits the relationship between words and images.