Ideas drive design

Designers are spoiled for new ideas, without which most everyday design activity would soon become dull or no longer fresh. Indeed, design is much about experimenting with thoughts and ideas on how people live and interact with their environment. Ideas, however, come and go, and often swiftly, testing the attention span of designers. What designers need to consider then, when an idea appear, seemingly, out of the blue, is whether or not it will hold their attention. So if a designer think they might lose interest halfway through the design process, perhaps they should reconsider getting involved. Because while the idea can get the design process started, follow the idea through is not always a part of its initial offering.This observation help explain why ideation is about generating, and communicating ideas, not necessarily realising them. Indeed, ideas contain designers' most creative impulses and, arguably, drive the design.

Aha! moments and neuroscience

There are many words to describe the emergence of sudden ideas - sparks, flashes, or light-bulb moments. But what makes these moments both fascinating and perplexing is that they usually happen abruptly, without warning and seemingly out of thin air. Studies of the phenomenon of sudden insights using behavioral methods have been ongoing for decades, resulting in speculations as to where these ideas come from and how they form. More recently, however, cognitive neuroscience has been able to explain the inner workings of the brain during aha! moments. Using brain-image technology and recording brainwaves of individuals in idea generating experiments, scientists in both the USA and the EU have found that these sudden sparks are the result of a complex series of brain states in which new neural network pathways give rise to new ideas. Findings also suggest that more neural processes are required in Aha! moments than when solving a problem analytically or methodically. However, the more activated the brain is, the more likely it is to be distracted, as too much attention can overload the brain's information-processing capabilities. Instead, we are most creative when we are in a positive mood experiencing lower levels of arousal in the cortical areas of the brain. It is in states of daydreaming, doodling and drifting when we are most receptive to new ideas. Now these findings may not come as a surprise to people with a creativity mindset; Albert Einstein, for example, attributed some of his greatest physics breakthroughs to his violin-playing, claiming it connected different parts of his brain in new ways. Main source: http://brainworldmagazine.com

From I-deation to AI-deation?

Designers (humans) generate ideas, right. And machines? Advancement in computer science may suggest that machines can generate ideas too, and the notion of Artificial Intelligence, AI is being evoked in the sense that AI algorithms are capable of learning from data which in turn may derive all possible knowledge, by considering every possible hypothesis (idea) and matching it against the data. This in theory. In reality, in the context of problem solving, to consider every possibility is unobtainable because of the rapidly increase in communication lines as ideas are added in the design process. AI, then, in present day, seems, at best, an ersatz good substituing or replacing human thought but lacking "self-awareness" essential for human centred design.

Turnaround of ideas

Idea generation, the initial phase of ideation (the generation, development and communication of ideas) is quick, typified by the brainstorming technique. In the creative industry, such as advertising and marketing, however, ideation services can be slow, i.e. there can be a considerable gap between the client's brief and the agency's presentation of new ideas. To speed things up, one such media agency, Mindshare, is challenging traditional communications planning and has launched a service that produces a campaign within 24 hours of a brief being submitted by clients, who will only pay if they like the idea. Although such quick turnarounds of clients' briefs seem to fit today's fast-paced media world, there are concerns that the concept might encourage short-term tactical thinking over long-term strategic thinking necessary for brand-building. Such reservations, moreover, reflect how unconstrained brainstorming sessions rarely produce meaningful results. Arguably idea generation sessions work best when designed, rather than improvised. That is, attention is paid to what should be done before the actual session ("framing the question") as well as after the session ("follow-up").

Innovation is opaque

History is opaque. And so too, it may be argued, is innovation. Or, to paraphrase Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: Innovation is what comes out in the market, the application of better solutions to products or services, not the thinking that produces a new idea, device or method, the generator of ideas. Thus there is an incompleteness of our grasp of the action or process of innovating, since we don't fullly understand how innovation works, in a world that is more complex, complicated or random than we realise. Or, as explained by Tim Berners-Lee, the WorldWideWeb inventor, innovation occurs when a lot of random ideas mix until they fit.

"My idea is better than yours"

The "Aha!" moment, or when ideas seem to appear as bolts out of the blue holds a certain fascination among inventors and the general public alike fuelling the notion of the "lone genius". However, the reality behind innovation in today's complex markets for products and services is often a collaborative creative process where individuals bat around thoughts collectively and rub ideas against each other also eliciting input from across disciplines. The view that groups or teams rather than individuals form and shape ideas has implications for who gets credit for innovation, or even intellectual property, IP. That is, should IP be shared freely and placed whenever possible into the public domain and open-source-commons? Or should these rights be protected and inventors be allowed to profit from their proprietary ideas and innovations? Moreover, which of these two approaches best promote innovation? For example, Bill Gates (Microsoft) and Steve Jobs (Apple) didn't believe in free sharing of software, in contrast to Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the WorldWideWeb, who insisted that the Web protocols should be made available freely, and shared openly in the public domain.

Too many ideas?

Some may argue that creative ideas are overrated and what matters isn't the idea itsef but converting ideas into products or services, in what is sometimes described as idea management or the innovation process, and that the implementation of ideas is what creates real market value. Yet to create new products and services ideas are needed in the first place, and whether the idea is new through reconfiguring or combining existing products or services, or novel through primary research and invention. So back to square one; how do designers generate, develop and communicate ideas that are sufficiently appealing and persuasive to take to the stage of realisation? Design ideation, then, matters because successful ideas can be seen as well argued proposals to win over the relevant audience(s) using the most appropriate ideation tools (words, visuals and models).