creativity process

Creativity and InnovationNotes on the Marc Tassoul class

By Alejandro Rios <[email protected]> - 2012

The process is based on IDEO's Human centered design toolkit: HEAR, CREATE, DELIVER.

In every stage, you can use techniques to FACILITATE the process and get new ideas, or break walls in order to move on:

Hear

Create

Deliver

It's a journeyfrom your leftside of the brain...

...to the right side...

...and Back!

Diverge(expand really wide)

Cluster/Categorize

Converge(back to the

original purpose)



Before you flight, first you need a TEAM!

"Good group dynamics is for creativity teamslike a having a soil ready to be planted"

I think a single person behaves as a team

as well. You can also be a facilitatorof your creativity applying the

same techniques to your multiple

personalities/intelligences, i.e. to avoid procrastination.

You need to invest time in the first stages: Forming, Storming and Norming.

1. Forming a team:Use Icebreakers,Make them learn each other namesis important.

2. Storming: the group conflicts.

Use Introvert and Extrovert as verbs.

Follow the Acceptance Flow and

identify common goals.

Ideal teams have 2 to 12/16 members. More than 25 is not a team, is a groupor community. You have to break them in groups of 4 to 6/8 to do normal things, and break them in groups of 2 for more complex things.

Plan your schedule.Create a mental and physical spacebefore the session.



Now Hear: understand

the subject!

4. Norming:The team is now organizedand ready to 5. Perform.

To FACILITATE, draw the problem to the group:show some images related, and some qualities of the product to inspire them.

Problem analysis is about opening and expandingthe solution space like walking and lighting inside a dark building. Walls can be broken with combinations/patterns and metaphors, or just introducing a random stimulus.

There are many tools for this: mindmaps, collagenewspaper, 5 Whys+1How, Stakeholder analysis, progressive abstraction (Why, oh why!), etc.

Make open questions, don't confirm your ego.

The objective now is to hear and understandto get to a single Problem Statement:

What?(go to the system itself)

So What?(reduction)

What next?(build an understanding)

What else?(the essence)Take Samples



Create!Suspension of disbelieve

After the problem analysis,wrtite down the first obvious ideaswith a brainstorming to PURGEyour brain.

Then take a Break!, but leave the session

with a name for the empty book you're

about to write together.

(shadding the known)

Now when you're back, you areready to takeoff. Don't worry, once you draw the first line, you start seeing the horizon.

There are many techniques for idea generation: inspiration,brain-storming, brain-writing, matrices, analogies and metaphors.random stimulus, and many others but all of them try to make yoususpend disbelive. Fly all you want if you know how to land!

Just let go and thinkof Non-sense ideas!

For a good designer, today is history.See where the trend is going,pre-sensing future utopias/dystopias.

Synectics!Use clustering, combinations andpatterns to group ideas.

The FACILITATOR has to go group by group moving them to the next step, so they don't get lost.



Deliver:Sell your baby monster!

Nice figures up there, butit's time to come back tothe ground!

There are many selection criteria to pick upthe winner idea.

Every company has its own risk taking policy when balancing new meaning vs feasibility

In general, break trough ideas comewhen you reformulate the original problem

The newer the idea, the more it is like a monster.

If it is too new, people do not like it. Find a balance

Conceptulalizing is like

making a painting:

1. Structural (make a skeleton)

2. Formal (add volumes)

3. Material (add details)Concept presentation must have:-Name-Short description-Image (with human being and context)-Why/How it is interesting-Concerns (cost,etc.)

Congratulations!,

you landed safetely.



Adjourning:saying goodbye...

Thank you all! Thanks Marc, Helga, Laura, Daniel

Maria Clara, Felipe, María José, Wassim, Huzefa,

Carolina, Daniel, Evelyn. Juan, Sara, Tracy, Alejandra,

Mateo, Robinson, Pablo, Louis, Eva, Soren, Joel,

Jorge and Soren.

Finally, it's important to close the cycle in order to move on.

Don't just let all the people leave the session,make a closing activity, give them a chanceto say a few words and maybe give them a souvenir.

For me, this class was like a brain massage. The weekstarted with me memorizing all the names of my classmates and stating my personal contract:

"I hereby commit myself to understand my own and otherpeople's creative processes, and to know and adapt any tools or tips or experiences that help me develop my creativity, break any barriers and facilitate innovation in all the teams I join".

I think I could achive all of it, or at least enough to write down thisreport hahahaha

All the class was itself a journey in wich the whole groupexperienced all of the stages in team dynamics and in thecreative process.

By thursday we were all tired, because of the intense activitiesand other responsabilities, like jobs and other classes, butin the end everything worked out just well.

creativity process

Documents