Computational ideators

A large part of ideation, or any creative activity is to feel you're playing. Because design is driven by passion, and you have to feel you just have to do it. In this pursuit, ideators have a wide range of tools at their disposal, including computers mirroring real design situations in time and space. This may suggest the emergence of computational ideators. But entering cyberspace doesn't mean that sketching, model making or prototyping using paper, card, foam or clay have become redundant. Rather, digital and analogue ideation tools compliment each other, and sometimes the digital and the analogue workflow converge, for example, when clay models are scanned and further developed in 3D CAD. So the digital-analogue divide is a false one; the computer has become as necessary for the ideation process as the drawing board or the toolkit for hands-on modelling. But, with design being an inherently interdisciplinary activity, computational ideators may have an advantage when communicating ideas to a wider audience, be they end users, engineers or marketing professionals.

Grammatical gender influence

Unlike English, nouns in many languages have grammatical gender, for example German and French. Speakers of these languages must take care to mark gender with definite articles and pronouns. They also must alter adjectives and even verbs for gender agreement. But can grammatical gender influence speakers’ thinking when they’re speaking another language entirely? Take for example the word "chair", which has opposite genders in German (masculine; der Stuhl), and French (feminine; la chaise). Would object gender, then, influence designers when they generate, develop and communicate ideas? Many designers like to believe design processes are "neutral" in focusing on problem solving. But if gendered conventions of language can influence our thoughts, even in small, subtle ways — making a chair seem sturdier (masculine) or prettier (feminine) might suggest design is not free of gender stereotypes. Moreover, imagine how grammatical gender might affect not only design ideation but thoughts, feelings, and behaviours of consumers in global markets.

Ideation readying

Sometimes we have a vague idea of what to do, but we don't feel quite ready or brave enough to take the idea to the next stage. We need a push, an intervention, a serendipitous stroke. It's a person or event that triggers our will to ideate that gives us a good excuse to go do what we know we should do. Do you have any first thoughts about how to put yourself on the ideation runway ready for takeoff?

Power of ideas

In the realm of design, there is a presumption that ideas survive if they work, if they find an appropriate application in the material world. But ideas are in competition for our attention; some succeed, some fail, others pass and fade. Perhaps we expect too much of ideas, particularly as there appears no perfect pragmatic solution to a problem expressed in the idea. Yet at the ideation stage, we do not know precisely what an idea can do, or produce, or what forces it serves. It is then we may find that the power of ideas can only be fully appreciated by experimentation, testing and experience.

Ideation ABC

Design ideation, in appealing to pluralism of form, suggests multiplicity of thinking and doing, within, between or without disciplines, also expressed in terms of Assemblage, Bricolage, or Collage, a kind of creative ABC which questions the commodification of word and image in a neoliberal economic gloabalisation. But when ABC is applied to product innovation, and hence marketisation, ideation is modified, its focus shifting from a critical to technical or developmental perspective.

Predictive ideation?

Most innovations are incremental rather than radical, that is, innovation resulting from improvement to existing designs rather than abrupt change. This may suggest, where innovation is primarily a rational problem-solving process with an emphasis on business viability of the product, that designers be guided by algorithms to optimise innovation. Designers, accordingly, would compile a history of ideas taking as its basic unit of analysis the unit-idea, or the individual concept, then instruct algorithms to search for indirect and non-obvious correlations in the data to help identify and develop innovative ideas. For example, a US website developer has developed an algorithm to analyse and rate pop music providing predictive insights into "number one" record hits. The algorithmic approach to innovation, however, is not new - for example, the theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ), or multidisciplinary design optimisation (MDO) in a range of industries, and the application of algorithms is now part of everyday life, from internet searches to financial trading to climate modelling. Although computation cannot fully replace activities that require human judgement, personal preference or true decisions, algorithms make more kinds of knowledge codifiable and therefore may help advance innovation processes and reduce dependence on solely empirical or experimental means of generating design data. In this sense, algorithms can function as an ideation tool.

To sketch something out

To sketch something out is etymologically based on the literal meaning of sketch; to draw quickly and with only a few details. But to sketch out something does not require an actual pen & paper sketch. To create a rough idea, plan or image of something, or to make connections between ideas, a variety of means (ideation tools) can be used to good effect, including words, computing, and sketch modelling.