Ideation as eco practice

Design ideation, as a social activity placed within a 'culture of innovation', often conjures up the never ending call for "What new?" or, "What next?" Or, to borrow from literary criticism, ideation may be seen as a form of  'stream of consciousness' - a narrative mode that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind" of a narrator, in which case the ideator is the narrator depicting, or visualising a myriad of thoughts and ideas. Stream of consciousness followed by an apparently endless stream of consumer products and gadgets. But this striving in modern consumer society of always doing or getting something new, whether that is creating or buying a new product or service, is controversial. And as technology brings an increasing pace of change into everyday life, including the design sector, more responsibility is being placed on designers, and their ideas to ensure that innovation is aligned with global issues such as sustainability. This may suggest that the culture of innovation, where innovation seems confused with change for change's sake, and arrived at via the free market system, is no longer sustainable to meet urgent environmental concerns. The question, then, will a new ecosystem of innovation, or knowing when to change be championed by designers themselves, as part of distributed leadership in industry and education? Or, will the necessary change happen through external forces and market regulation?

Design as rhetoric of things

Rhetoric is commonly regarded as language designed to motivate, persuade, or inform, or the art of persuasion through speaking and writing. In Ancient Greece, oration, or public speaking, was the primary use of rhetoric. Aristotle outlined four types of rhetoric, or modes of persuasion, that can shape words into effective rhetoric: Logos - appeals to logic and reason. It relies on the content of the message, including data and facts, to support its claims. Ethos - relies on the reputation of the person delivering the message. Pathos - establishes an emotional connection with the audience. Kairos - appeals to timing, such as whether the argument occurs at the right time and in the ideal surrounding context to be accepted. For designers, however, there is more to rhetoric than expressed in classical rhetoric because in the digital age the persuasive power relies much on computer-based images, both 2D and 3D, including 3D printing and so the designed "thing" (or object), is a design argument in itself. Indeed, Dieter Rams, the industrial designer closely associated with the German consumer product company Braun argues that designers cannot remain at the level of words: 'They must transpose their insights into concrete, three-dimensional objects'. Similarly, Richard Buchanan, a professor of design, management, and information systems, says that while the word design is the natural word for all forms of production for use providing the intelligence, the thought or idea that organises all levels of production, design is an architectonic art in respect to things made for use that is not simply the old verbal rhetoric but, rhetoric of things.

TikTok for ideation

If you have not used TikTok, you are rapidly becoming the global exception, writes Drew Harwell in the Washington Post*. In five years, the app, once written off as a silly dance-video fad, has become one of the most prominent and technically sophisticated juggernauts on the internet - a phenomenon that has secured an unrivaled grasp on culture and everyday life. TikTok’s website was visited last year more often than Google and its ad revenue is estimated to have tripled this year, to $12 billion. TikTok is a social media app that allows users to create short videos of their own up to 3 minutes long. It's different from other social media platforms because while Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram are primarily focused on sharing images and text, TikTok is all about sharing videos. But more than that. Tiktok has blown up the model of what a social network can be. Silicon Valley taught the world a style of online connectivity built on hand-chosen interests and friendships. TikTok doesn’t care about those. Instead, it unravels for viewers an endless line of videos selected by its algorithm, then learns a viewer’s tastes with every second they watch, pause or scroll. You don’t tell TikTok what you want to see. It tells you: “We’re talking about a platform that’s shaping how a whole generation is learning to perceive the world.”. TikTokers are increasingly using the app as a visual search tool too. Thanks to its gravitational pull on creators and audiences, the app’s videos now encompass practically every topic on earth. TikTok, then, is an app that stimulate creativity. In other words, TikTok can be seen as another ideation tool for generating and communicating ideas. *Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2022/tiktok-popularity/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB

Ideation: Words or images?

'I prefer drawing to talking - drawing is faster and leaves less room for lies', quipped Le Corbusier (1887-1965). Or, Eero Saarinen (1910-61): 'To me, the drawn language is a very revealing language', adding, 'one can see in a few lines whether a man is really an architect'. Although drawing predicates most design disciplines, this is not to say that designers need to be able to draw like an accomplished artist. The freehand sketch, even a scribble or doodle, is often a starting point towards an accomplished design. And when drawing digitally, with a tablet pen, there may be an advantage in that the designer can undo and tweak as much as they like until they are satisfied with a design. However, in the context of ideation, visual or verbal communication are not mutually exclusive. Indeed both visual and verbal modes of idea communication are rhetorical means, that is, ideation belongs to "the art of persuasion". And so what matters in communicating ideas is the relationship between words and images: Words explain, images suggest - or vice versa. Ideation, then, as its most effective, exploits the relationship between words and images.

Creative writing prompts

Creative writing prompts is a way of inspiring innovation and as such is an ideation tool. Now, in the age of artificial intelligence, the word prompt, in its meaning of 'to make something happen' or 'prompt someone to do something' (verb), or 'something done quickly and without delay' (adjective) or, as a noun, 'a sign or set of directions to say, write or do something', is taking on a new significance. And so AI is being used to generate images based on text prompts, or generative artificial intelligence (GAI) - a short and precise sentence that describes the desired image. Accordingly, AI algorithms turn text input into images by combining and altering existing images using artificial neural networks. Currently, the way the AI industry is doing this is to train machine learning algorithms through real photos that already exist on the internet. Yet AI generated images are potentially limitless and so the technology of text to image generators provides a new approach to ideation. That is, in conceptualising designs, a human-machine interaction, or dialogue between visualisation (non-verbal) and language (words). But the technology is not without controversy, notably because the question of copyright has not be resolved. That is, it remains unclear where things stand for the people who own the original images used by the AI generator. This uncertainty reflects the idea/expression dichotomy in copyright law, that is, while ideas, facts and concepts are not protectable by copyright, the expression of those ideas, facts, and concepts are protectable. As a reaction to this, Getty Images, one of the world's biggest libraries of stock imagery, has banned AI-generated images from its site.

Ideation is relational

That ideas are not stand-alone elements of thought but relational, and ideators act not on their own but with others, seem reasonable. Yet the notion that all properties, or "entities", “attributes”, “qualities”, “features”, “characteristics”, or “types" and their agents are relational is not without debate although central to the western philosophical tradition. Plato called them “ideas” or “forms”, and viewed them as universals, in contrast with particulars or individuals. The Sophist, written by Plato in 360 BC, contains the following phrase: “Anything which possesses any sort of power to affect another, or to be affected by another, if only for a single moment, however trifling the cause and however slight the effect, has real existence; and I hold that the definition of being is simply action". And in the eastern tradition, the Buddhist philosopher Nāgārjuna’s central notion of “emptiness” tells us that nothing has independent existence: anything that exists, exists thanks to, as a function of, or according to the perspective of, something else. Furthermore, in the material world, we know that a chemical substance is defined by how it reacts, a biological species is defined according to the niche it occupies in the biosphere, and what defines us as human beings is our relationships. Moreover, atoms, as quantum physics show are defined by their physical interactions with the rest of the world. This suggests that reality is not a collection of things but a network of processes. If so, ideation, as part of the design process, and ideas, as outcomes of this process, can be described in terms of relationships and interactions. This further suggests that winning ideators are those who collaborate. Too often we measure success in terms of a single ideator's fortunes. However, prioritising individual ideas over the common good might prevents us from addressing the true challenges that face the world today. (Adapted from, and added to) Source: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/sep/05/the-big-idea-why-relationships-are-the-key-to-existence

Moore on drawing ideas

Henry Moore (1898-1986), the English artist perhaps best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures also produced many drawings. Talking about the difference between drawing and carving, Moore says that there's a connection between his drawings and his sculpture: 'Drawing lessens the danger of repeating oneself and getting into a formula. It enlarges one's form of repertoire, one's form experience. But in my sculpture, I do not draw directly upon the memory or observation of a particular object, but rather use whatever comes up from my general fund of knowledge of natural forms'. Referring to drawings, in his notebooks and sketchbooks, he describes them as 'tryouts of possible ideas for sculpture, or just scribbles in which one hopes that some new ideas might come'. As to using drawing as a means of generating ideas, Moore says: 'Sometimes you would sit down with no idea at all, and at some point you'd see something in the doodling, scribbling - whatever you call it; and from then on you could evolve the idea ... or, in another way of doing it, one would start off with a definite idea ... you would give yourself a theme and let the variations come'. Here, Moore expresses ways of ideating that would apply to design more generally. Source: James, P. ed. (1966). Henry Moore on Sculpture. London: Macdonald & Co.