Visualising the dream

Sometimes design ideas appear in dreams or daydreams, produced by the subconscious mind. But whatever their source, ideas need to be visualised and acted upon, or they risk remaining fantasies never to be realised. To exemplify, this month saw the opening of a new museum in Paris designed by architect Frank Gehry, and commissioned by Bernard Arnault, head of Louis Vuitton. Shaped like a massive glass cloud, the building, nicknamed the iceberg, is a metal and wood structure with 3,600 glass panels. Says Gehry: 'This project is a dream , so the first idea was to create a dream. I wanted to create a dream for Bernard, who has dreamed all of this. The idea of creating a glass building that is transparent, ephemeral, and like a cloud is difficult to achieve in architecture'. The museum took eight years to realise, from initial sketches and 60 physical scale models, to complex structural engineering design and construction.

Are ideators introverts?

Ideators are often seen as sensitive people, and a lot of the words used to describe that sensitivity are used to describe introversion as well, for example, needing time alone, more reflective, more independent, and more refined. Indeed, introverts are often thought of as ideas people who are inventive through individual creative work without needing hype-filled brainstorming sessions to bounce ideas back and forth. Yet ideation is a continuum of introversion and extroversion, from idea generation to idea communication, and so ideators need to be flexible capable of switching between the inner world of ideas and images, and the outer world of people and things.

Tools of desire

While ideas often appear in a flash, the ubiquitous "Aha" moment, the realisation of ideas takes more patience, wisdom, and maturity. To make ideas happen, and when this calls for a collaborative approach, the idea has to be communicated effectively. It is here ideation tools, and whether in forms of words, sketches or models, in analogue or digital modes, or combinations thereof, prove central to forward the idea to a desirable outcome.

Act now

Simon Woodroffe, the Yo! Sushi founder, says: 'You cannot really be successful without putting in an enormous amount of work. And you can’t do that just from the desire to get richer. You need to have an idea that you want to change your world.' As an entrepreneur, Woodroffe is an ardent believer in self-appraisal, and prefers giving individual employees money to develop an idea on a hunch, both to encourage creativity and to speed up the process. He continues: 'As soon as you start a debate, it becomes a committee. Committees have a rather clever way of stopping anything happening'. This is unthinkable in Woodroffe’s world, where the whole idea is to make things happen; to confront fear of failure and move past it. Whatever the issue faced by a business or individual, he is adamant that the best time to act is now. Source: The Times; Power in Partnership.

Constructive ideas

The plan to demolish and rebuild each of the four stacks of London's Battersea Power Station seems straightforward enough: To duplicate exactly the original design and construction of the chimneys. But the process of deconstruction and reconstruction of the 103-metre tall stacks have called for fresh ideas. First, the southwest chimney will be scanned, with the resulting 3D model used to rebuild all four chimneys. Then the stacks will be destroyed by a self-climbing rig which will start at the top and work its way down using four concrete crushers to demolish the structure by breaking off six-inch sections and sending the debris down a funnel inside the chimney. Finally, the rebuild of the chimneys will use a rig carrying a reconfigurable mould to cast the new chimneys' 1.22m-tall sections in situ.

Ideas from everywhere

Where do we get our ideas from? An old question, with many answers. Says author Neil Gaiman: 'You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. You get ideas when you ask yourself simple questions, like "What if...?", or, "If only", or, "I wonder"'. Continues Gaiman: 'An idea doesn't have to be a plot notion, just a place to begin creating. Plots often generate themselves when one begins to ask oneself questions about whatever the starting point is'. Moreover, 'Often ideas come from two things coming together that haven't come together before'. So, where does Gaiman get his ideas from? 'I make them up. Out of my head'. It seems his observations may apply to design ideation too. Source: neilgaiman.com

Ideation walk

While many designers anecdotally say they get their best ideas while walking, research now shows that walking can indeed improve creative thinking. The educational psychology researchers at Stanford examined creativity levels of people while they walked versus while they sat. Across the board, creativity levels were consistently and significantly higher for those walking compared to those sitting, or an increase by an average 60 per cent when walking. The walkers did particularly well on a “divergent thinking” creativity test – a thought process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions, or what is sometimes known as “thinking outside the box”. For example, the participants had to think of alternate uses for a given object, such as a tyre. Many more original ideas came from the walkers. The study found that walking itself, and whether indoors or outdoors, was the main factor boosting creativity. Productive creativity involves a series of steps – from idea generation to execution – and the research demonstrated that the benefits of walking applied to the "divergent" element of creative thinking, but not to the more "convergent" or focused thinking characteristic of insight.