Creative Imagination

Imagination is a unique part of being human. But although imagination, in a philosophical perspective, can be difficult to describe posing taxonomic challenges, for example, to imagine isn't the same as desiring or anticipating that which is imagined, designers are acutely aware of imagination as a power for visualising and shaping the future of things not yet in existence, of things to come, in what has been called 'creative imagination', as in combining ideas in unexpected and unconventional ways *. Fed by imagination, designers generate ideas as part of everyday creativity, ideas which are propositional and purposeful in that designers want to see their ideas realised. In order to achieve this, the ideation process typically starts with visual imagery, a mental picture to be developed and communicated using images but also words and physical objects, that is, ideas communicated through language-like representations, picture-like formats and objects that have spatial locations. * Currie, G., and I. Ravenscroft, 2002, Recreative Minds: Imagination in Philosophy and Psychology, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Narrative design

Language is integral to design, and it is hard to find a design solution which cannot be described in words. But although designers are trained in problem solving using both words and images, a designer usually starts by getting the client to describe their needs and desires, and often arrives at a solution as much through that interaction as through anything the designer can read from a brief or, say observe from a site visit. Narrative design, then, suggests that clients can achieve a desired outcome only when they can tell the story of their wants and needs, often in the context of a more extensive narrative. In the client-designer interaction, language helps to chart the design process, even when images (such as sketches and computer renderings) can represent its current state. A picture, then, is not always worth a thousand words -sometimes, it is the words that identify the problem. The client-designer interaction, then, is part of the design solution, and is why the narrative can have such a huge impact on the design outcome.

Art before technology

The tag "paper architect" was sometimes applied to Zaha Hadid (1950-2016) in her early career due to her lack of built work, but the term might be appropriate for an architect who painted, scribbled or drew her ideas before they were rendered by computer.  Her drawings and paintings may have affinity with, for example, Le Corbusier, Scharoun or El Lissitzky in terms of colour and fluidity. Yet, according to Hadid, 'the paintings were always part of the building - but they were never done as pure art’. Instead she used her art to test spatial ideas that she couldn’t yet make concrete without the aid of computer algorithms. Paradoxically, then, it might be said that it was technology that had to catch up with Hadid- not the other way round.

Artificial ideation?

Logic and science have an impressive track record. And so do intuition and art. But whereas logic is used in, say computer hard- and software, where "correctness" is key to operation, intuition is used in design to generate new ideas, where there is no necessity to be logical, provable or correct. And because logic-based models require theory, they work for big-data analysis, long-term predictions, or puzzle problems (where there's only one "correct" way to solve the problem). But ideation and innovation do not need theory - they are event-based processes and work for short term predictions (often with incomplete information), or for fuzzy problems (where problem solving allows for ambiguity, skepticism and/or corrective action). And as many design problems are fuzzy in nature, involving human diversity, complexity and unpredictability, it seems intuition will continue to surpass logic for "wicked" problems in the design domain. ["wicked" problems have been contrasted with relatively "tame", soluble problems in mathematics, chess or puzzle solving, see Rittel & Webber 1973].

What's the idea?

When Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect, was asked if the New York skyline excited him, he answered: 'It does not. Because it was never planned, it is all a race for rent, and it is a great monument, I think, to the power of money and greed trying to substitute money for ideas. I don't see an idea in the whole thing anywhere. Do you? Where's the idea in it? What's the idea?' From Mike Wallace interview with Frank Lloyd Wright in 1957. Wright (1867-1959) believed in designing structures that were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture.

Human-computer ideation

Human-computer interaction, HCI is concerned with the ways humans interact with computers, both hardware and software. Of special interest to design ideation is how computers can help designers generate and communicate ideas, visually or textually, or both, or in model form, such as prototyping (3D printing). In this, ideators need computer competence in visualising ideas - to create visual materials and artefacts as well as to understand the impact of visual materials, including digital imagery, data and information visualisation. In other words, the computer becomes an ideation tool.

Why ideation skills matter

Ideas, at first, may seem plentiful, cheap and easy to come by. And so it may be that ideation skills are overlooked or underestimated in the design process. But Dr Laura Kornish, a US academic who teaches product development courses, where students generate and develop ideas for new products, says that better ideas, on average, lead to more successful products, as rated by users (the failure rate for fast moving consumer goods is close to 50 per cent), and therefore getting good ideas is a process that requires not only talent, time and money but discipline. To discipline one's imagination for visible creative outcomes, then, suggests focus on ideation skills, and whether acquiring new skills or improving existing ones.