Ideation and use of metaphor

Language in the widest sense plays an important role in the early fuzzy stages of design and helps to identify and capture design concepts. Metaphor use is part of this process. In a study on how novice architecture students assess the use of metaphors and the creativity of their own designs, it was found that the most important role that metaphors play in design problem solving is to support the design of innovative products. In contrast, the use of metaphors did not help so much in the functional and aesthetic aspects of design (Casakin, H.P. 2007. Metaphors in Design Problem Solving: Implications for Creativity).

Ideation efficiency?

Could economic efficiency criteria apply to design ideation? For example, ideation efficiency is achieved when an idea is produced making the most efficient use of the ideator's scarce resources (talent, time, and energy), and when that idea best meets the needs and wants of the consumer at a price that fairly reflects the value of resources used up in the realisation of the idea.

Ideas in context

Experience by itself, like raw data, teaches nothing. Similarly, ideas have little or no meaning apart from their context. But even when the context is known, ideas are no substitute for hard work. Ideas well thought out and communicated, however, may save many hours of hard work. Indeed, robust ideation may help foresee problems of production and in use that may be encountered with the product or service.

Lost in translation?

The linguist Guy Deutscher argues that our mother tongue does affect how we think and, just as important, how we perceive the world. Now if language affects thought it would impact ideation too because language is the main mode of human communication. But what happens to ideas generated in non-English mother tongues when communicated in English? Assuming that ideas, or first thoughts, take colour and cultural value from the mother tongue, might ideation get lost in translation?

Ideation as learning

When we ideate we learn too. And when ideas are concrete rather than abstract, for example, when we generate ideas through hands-on engagement with modelling or drawing material, ideation becomes experiential learning. That is, learning from experience or discovery rather than taught or rote learning. Experiential learning is manifested in ideation workshops where conceptual skills are developed and improved on. http://www.ideation-workshop.blogspot.com/

Sleep on it

So you've got a few ideas for a given situation. But which one to choose?

Psychologists from the University of Amsterdam devised a series of experiments to test a theory on "deliberation without attention" and found that once you have the information, you have to decide, and this is best done with conscious thought for simple decisions, but left to unconscious thought - to "sleep on it" - when the decision is complex.

Moreover, and according to the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University, lack of sleep affects areas of the brain that respond to novelty. That is, without sleep we are unable to take on new information, think innovatively or respond intelligently to changing circumstances (while we sleep we process information too).

Furthermore, research at the University of British Columbia found that too much reflection could be detrimental in some decsion-making situations. To decide which idea, then, suggests we engage in (conscious) reflection but don't make a major decision without sleeping on it.

Ideation worlds

Ideation tools include digital applications. The advent of interactive graphical systems raises possibilities for new forms of collaboration of designers and computers in the creative process where computer programming supports the creation of dynamic, real-time, story models. The experience of ideation as storytelling, then, could be enhanced through interactive simulations of computer-generated story worlds.