Small group ideation

To challenge individualist conceptions of creativity to argue that social interaction, communication, and collaboration are key elements in creative thought and practice. In this vein, Tyler Cowen, writing in Bloomberg Opinion suggests that "When working on any kind of problem, task or question embed yourself in a small group of peers with braodly similar concerns". This is because, Cowen continues, "The group will give you ideas, feedback and help keep you focused on the issue at hand. The personalities and framings of the other group members will make the issue seem more vivid. After all, there are few problems you are better off facing alone".  Cowen's piece of advice stems from what has been dubbed in Silicon Valley  "the small group theory". For a second near-universal piece of advice, Cowen suggests: "Get a mentor". That is, someone who has more knowledge, general or special, and experience than yourself. The advantage of a mentor,, says Cowen,is that "Aside from providing teaching and advice, the mentor, like the small group, helps make an issue or idea more vivid: A living, breathing exemplar of success stands before you. The mentor makes a discipline feel more real and the prospect of success more realistic". In short, Cowen's advice seems worth trying. After all, ideators must always be open-minded in their approach to idea generation and communication. Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-12-07/the-only-two-pieces-of-advice-you-ll-ever-need?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB

Delivering design through sketching

"To sketch is a mental exercise", says Santiago Calatrava, architect, sculptor and painter as well as structural engineer.. "It's a mental exercise that goes directly fromy our mind into your hand in a very spontaneous way. And probably one of the most effcient ways to capture the idea and the vision you have in your mind. And also to analyse it, to investigate, to let it change and transform.The drawings, in the beginning may be very imprecise but with time they become more and more precise and, maybe follow much more the intuition. And then with time, they become more and more construction drawings". He continues: "I started in an art school, then went into an architecture school, and then an engineering school. For me, the work as a sculptor proceeds architecture. I was proceeding to find my own language, independent from schools, independent from tendencies, independent from any dictate, thinking that I have the right to say whatever I want to say in my own manner. I like the idea of being an artist but being an artist doesn't mean living in another world but working very hard and thinking and analysing that this what you are doing can have also a higher signification. I mean, simply doing a platform, where people will wait to get a train  can be also a beautiful place. Just that. But, finally, it is a work that you have to deliver, and work that goes over hundreds and hundreds of sketches". And so, given the proliferation of digital design tools, Calatrava proves sketching has not lost it relevance although there are anecdotal reports of a decline in freehand paper-based drawing ability among today's design students. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9qSRbUDWEI

Ideas incubation

Ideas may be percived as "thoughts at speed". Yet producing ideas too fast when trying to resolve a given problem might be detrimental to innovation because some of the best solutions don’t come "all at once" but after a longer incubation period. Therefore, resisting the temptation to find a solution quickly and instead keep searching for more ideas can lead to more innovative and far-reaching solutions.That is, to avoid premature ideas, better then for ideators to arrive at tentative decisions and then intentionally delay action in favor of additional incubation time. For example, the incubation phase was most important to Le Corbusier's creative process in which the elements of a given problem were let to simmer. That is to say, the architect stored the assigned task in his memory while, during the incubation period, he carried out research and documentation necessary to master the elements of the problem. Only then did the idea emerge, become precise and concrete, as evidenced in his notebooks and tracing-paper sketches. Or, in Le Corbusier's own words; a spontaneous birth (after incubation) of the whole work, all at once, and all of a sudden.

Work out ideas

Stephen Sondheim (1930-2021), the American composer and lyricist, had rather romantic views of art: "I had always thought an angel came down and sat on your shoulder and whispered in your ear 'dah-dah-dah-DUM ...  Never occurred to me that art was something worked out". This he came to realise while studying composition at college: "You think it's a talent, you think you're born with this thing. What I've found out and what I believed is that everybody is talented. It's just that some people get it developed and some don't". And so with ideation. Altough the Eureka!, or Aha! moment may be tinted with romantic views of art and creativity - that art, and creativity is somehow a talent. Yet successful ideas have to be worked out. Work out in the sense there's a problem to solve by considering the facts. (Interestingly, Sondheim regarded himself a mathematician by nature). Ideation, then, as problem solving that includes skills (deliberate practice) and ways of seeing (mental representations) that can get developed (can be learned) over time.

The world through rose-tinted glasses

The phrase ‘to see the word through rose-tinted glasses’ means to see things in an overly optimistic, often unrealistic way. But does wearing rose-tinted glasses actually make the world a better place or make people feel happier? And in the wake of COP26, the latest of the United Nations Climate Change Conferences, which serve to assess the progress in dealing with climate change, a process that began in the mid-1990s, would the world look more realistic through green-tinted glasses? If so, given the seriousness of climate change, should ideators form new ideas through seeing the world through a green rather than a rose prism? Yet social science research suggests that viewing our world a bit askew — with rose-tinted glasses — can have postive effects in that it puts us in a better mood, and therefore makes us more receptive to taking in more information, such as on climate issues. But there are risks with the rose-tinted approach, for example, toxic positivity, or delusional thinking. Moreover, seeing things through rose-tinted glasses may have a self-deceptive bias. That is, there’s a difference between perceiving the best account of things and perceiving the true account of things. However, because of this difference, "there are instances in which our beliefs can be wrong but useful", says Phil Corlett, an associate professor in psychiatry at Yale University. In the context of ideation, then, this suggests that ideators have to choose what they belive in to gain control over their ideas, and this whether seeing the world through rose-or green-tinted glasses (or any other colour).

What medium the idea?

'The medium is the message' is a statement by Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian philosopher (1911-1980) meaning that the form of a message (print, visual, musical, etc.) determines the ways in which that message will be perceived. McLuhan argued that modern electronic communications (including radio, television, films, and computers) would have far-reaching sociological, aesthetic, and philosophical consequences, to the point of actually altering the ways in which we experience the world. So, McLuhan proposed that media themselves, not the content they carry, should be the focus of study. For example, he describes the light bulb as a medium without any content stating that 'a light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence'. Now then, what about the proverbial light-bulb moment? A moment of sudden spasmodic effort that accomplishes nothing, or a moment of sudden inspiration, revelation, or recognition?

Idea ex machina

The notion of idea as an element of thought, or a way of thinking, as the result of mental activity, or conception in the mind of something to be done, such as a plan, or intention for doing something, goes back to the Age of Reason or the Age of Enlightenment (late 1600s to the end of the 1700s). This in contrast to the Romantic Era or Romanticism, a movement that started around 1770 (with its peak from 1800 to 1850) in response to the rational views of the age of enlightenment. The romantic thinkers felt that reason was overemphasised and that more focus should be put on the attributes such as aesthetic experience, human emotions and free expression. Now, Enlightenment is more closely related with natural sciences while romanticism is more associated with the arts and humanities. Ideation, then, in the context of design, from the First Machine Age, or the Industrial Revolution, to the Second Machine Age, or the Digital Revolution, interspersed by the Arts and Crafts movement and Modernism, draws inspiration both from the sciences (rational reasoning) and the arts (human subjectivity). In the wake of artificial intelligence, AI, this may suggest idea ex machina as an idea device, or generator or plotter of ideas. But while AI has established a direction and momentum of its own, the march of technology does not necessarily separate the ideologies of enlightenment and romanticism. True, Romanticism was a counter movement to the Enlightenment in its rejection of Enlightenment ideas about the primacy of reason and science. Science, however, is not an activity that goes on independently of all others. Thinking and feeling, then, are better seen as forming an indivisable continuum creating meaningful possibilities in contemporary design.