And this is the explanation with the presentation:
2. The square
57 squares (corners and text are extras)
Pattern thinking, as you see
the small white squares, you’re focussed to those.
3. Pattern thinking
Pattern thinking is using
patterns you are used to, you can easily go through them and quickly remember
the information.
These patterns are so well
known they are used for all kinds of processes in your brain.
There are patterns that are
unique to you, but also patterns that are common in larger groups.
As pattern thinking is stable
and predictable, it’s an important part of our thinking, and it’ll always be,
at least in some way, the basis for creative thinking.
4. Break through patterns
Patterns aren’t necessarily
good, and it’s important to break through them sometimes. This can be done by
thinking out of the box.
5. Thinking out of the box (1)
Box is made of the following
boundaries:
Laws and rules, as these
are things you naturally keep in mind, because disobeying them usually ends in
some kind of punishment.
Nature laws, kind of
hard to go around things like gravity or the speed of light.
Conventions, a little
bit back to the pattern thinking here, as conventions are usually collectively
accepted.
Assumptions, also a
connection to pattern thinking, but on a more individual level. When you see a
red traffic light, you automatically assume it’ll turn green again, while it
could also turn blue for example.
6. Thinking out of the box (2)
Inside the box are reasons to
stay in the box:
Habits, you’re used to doing certain
tasks in a specific way, which works, so why change it?
Experiences, both good
and bad, can cause you to stay within the box, because something worked out
well, or perhaps something went wrong when trying to go outside the box.
Patterns that usually lead to success, there are always individual or collective patterns that feel like they
will lead to success again, even though it might not be the best solution at
hand, it’ll be a solution.
Fear of the unknown, for a lot
of people, thinking outside the box is a scary exercise, as you’ll have to
leave your trusted pattern thinking, or go against some experiences you
remember that usually cause you to stay inside the box.
7. Your turn to think outside the box
10 Glasses, glass 2
-> glass 7 and glass 4 -> glass 9
3 numbers to twelve, 11+1=12
8. What do you see here?
Cow
9. Say the COLOUR not the word
Pattern thinking example,
conflict between left (analytical) and right (creative) brain.
10. What direction do you see it spin?
CW -> right brain activity
CCW -> left brain activity, these
people have an easier time seeing both directions.
11. Impossible cube
Been to a woodsmith, and gave
him this image, with the explanation that the bottom and top are both to be
made from one piece, and you should be able to take them apart. After looking
at it, he told me it’s impossible to make this box, as you couldn’t interlock
them after creating them. To which I said that it’s actually possible to make
this box.
I told him to take some time
thinking about it, and that I’d come back at the end of the week.
When I got back, he had
created the box, exactly as I imagined it. Instead of letting the dovetail
connections go all the way to the back, they go sideways, so you can slide the
parts over one another.
12. You probably know this one
Anti-ageing crème commercial
where they removed the chin of the old lady. This is also a form of pattern
thinking, you are used to see this, and thus immediately remember that you can
see both a young AND an old woman in the picture.
13. Well, what do you think?
This is a more deeply rooted
form of pattern thinking, as it’s normal for people to recognize human forms.
This ad cleverly used that to their advantage. Because the added lines from the
shoes, you assume you’re seeing something different, when combining that with
the idea it’s a human body.
14. Speaking about assumptions…
IX
Turn this into six by adding a
single line. It has two solutions:
SIX and IX6
Assumptions you have with this
exercise:
Roman numerals
Straight line, as I only see
straight lines
Has to be a number
They are letters
15. Creative process
Best done in groups of 5-15
people
Cod fishers
Specialized way of fishing, by
tying a net (approx. 100 meters) between 2 boats and sailing over cod-rich
spots. Because this requires a lot of coordination between the 2 ships, these
fishers are usually family, as it’s easier to communicate with each other then.
2 Brothers, Rob and Mark, were planning to set out the next morning, when Mark
got hospitalized for an appendicitis, which was a problem the doctor could
solve. Rob, however, also had a problem, he didn’t have anyone to join him on
his fishing trip.
The family came up with these
ideas:
·
Different
captain (hire one)
·
Rent the
boat to a colleague
·
Sell his
quota for that time to a colleague
·
Find a
different temporary job
·
Use radio signals
to steer the other boat and give the captain on the ship some advises
·
Catch
different fish, with another method
·
Rent the
boat to tourists
·
Rest a week
And some even crazier ideas:
·
Set a buoy
in the sea, attach the net and sail around it
·
Let Mark
watch with a webcam, and let him give directions to another captain.
·
Fish with
dynamite
·
Pull the
plug from the sea
Eventually he heard of another
team that was going to sail for fish, and he decided to join them as a third
boat, which gives each boat an even bigger catch and is more efficient.
We’re always surrounded by
chances, but it usually takes a problem to see these chances.
16. The three phases
Start phase
Diverging phase
Converging phase
17. Idea killers
Make them aware that during a
creative process, you can NOT use words like these.
18. The start phase
Start exercises like we just
did, this will boost creative thinking during the process.
When starting the actual case,
the most important part is the briefing, this will give an overview of the problem
at hand, and what they want solved.
Reformulating the problem
-> easy phrase to start brainstorming from and it’s a good way to get a
focussed view on the problem.
How can Albert Heijn shorten
the queues?
How can Albert Heijn make the
queues more exiting?
19. Diverging phase
It’s important to have an
initial purge of ideas, because this will get all the “easy” solutions out of
your head. For a creative session, it’s important to be able to come to the
wildest ideas you can imagine. This doesn’t mean the initial purge can’t have
those wild ideas though!
To boost the brainstorm, there
are a few techniques that help generate ideas. These are a few of the most
popular techniques:
Assumptions, here you
take the crucial terms in the starting formulation and see what assumptions
there are about these terms.
A few examples for queue: customers are in line, they’re
there with a shopping cart, there’s an order in the line, they wait, they’re
quiet.
You then take these
assumptions and eliminate them or turn them around, after which you
reassociate.
Analogies, are another way to approach
a problem. For this you take a completely unrelated term, and look for the
similarities between the two terms or differences from the analogy term.
An example for this is that
you might be looking for a new kind of table, and for the analogy you choose an
elephant.
Some examples for this are:
·
Trunk -
Add a vacuum tube to the table to clean the table afterwards
·
Live in a herd - Take a row of tables that you can connect to each other to create one
bigger table
·
Has a good memory - Put a screen in the middle of the table, so you can read news on it
during breakfast
And for the queue case, why
not take a beehive as analogy. This time looking at the similarities between
the two objects.
·
It’s a
group happening - Let people do a group activity like in some tv shows
·
There’s one
entrance, that’s also an exit - Put the registers in different corners of the
store to give people more of a choice
·
People (and
bees) look similar to each other - If we know our customers really well
individually, we can link them based on common interests
·
Transport
is a part of it - Can’t we arrange transport home in the queue?
Another form of this is the personal analogy, for this you need to
pick a crucial object from the problem formulation, and think of the problem as
if you were that object.
An example is found at a young
web design company. A lot of customers
failed to pay the invoices, so everyone approached the problem as if they were
the invoice sent to the companies. One of them said: “Through the mail I arrive
at the customer. Unfortunately: the desk of the financial director will never
be reached, as the secretary puts me in a folder. I feel small and not
understood.” From this an idea came to enlarge the invoice, but that would be
more expensive, and might not even be looked at. So they decided to make the
amount the companies had to pay a bit bigger by adding a zero. This resulted in
plenty of calls with protesting customers. The company said they had made a
mistake, and the final zero should be removed, the customers however, did pay
the amount they owed.
Superhero, take a superhero in mind and
describe his properties. Then take a look at how he or she would tackle the
problem. Keep in mind this doesn’t have to be your typical comic book hero, it
can also be your grandma for example.
The best way to tackle a
problem with this technique, is to let everyone choose their own hero and
describe their properties, then brainstorm with that, this way everyone has a
different way of thinking about the problem.
It’s also a good teambuilding
exercise
Flukes, for this technique you take
a book or magazine, call out a page, and randomly pick a word on that page,
this word has to have some meaning, things like in, on, etc. are useless. You
then start to write down associations with that word, and from these
associations, you’ll look at the problem and see if these spark any new ideas.
Free incubation, for this
technique, you take the problem and just let it rest for a while, keeping it in
the back of your mind somewhere. This gives you time to think about it, even if
you’re not consciously working on it. Later on, you can take these ideas and
add them to the current ideas, or use them to start a new brainstorm session.
20. Converging phase
In this phase you narrow down
your ideas to a few concepts, which will then be enriched.
To narrow your ideas down, you
use a technique called the COCD box, this gives you a good view of the ideas.
You then combine some ideas or take an idea and illustrate it more clearly.
Then you take it through the
SJE circle, to get a better description of the concepts. Finally you share the
final ideas with the groups if there are more than one.
21. COCD box
The COCD box has 3 sections:
Blue, which are the usual feasible
ideas. There’s nothing wrong with these and they are pretty useful.
Red, a creative session is
intended to generate ideas for the red box, as these are the original ideas,
that are feasible at this very moment. Even though they are new ideas, you feel
they can be realised quite easily.
Yellow, these ideas are the ones you
think are amazing, but which you think can’t be realised at the moment. They
are future or dream ideas. Ideas in this box will most likely be kept somewhere
to explore later when you have more assets or knowledge.
First you make a rough
selection of ideas, and throw away the absolute worst or useless ideas. Then
you write these ideas down somewhere anyone can see them, and give them
numbers. Everyone then writes down which ideas they think are blue, red or
yellow. This prevents people from influencing each other. After this you put
your stickers on the ideas you thought were Blue, Red or Yellow, if you have
approx. 100 ideas, give everyone max 8 stickers per color.
22. SJE circle
You then take the ideas that
passed the COCD box through the SJE circle.
Shape, for this step you start to
give shape to an idea. A few ways to do this are:
·
Expand the
idea, explain more of it and perhaps add bits of other ideas
·
Create a
moodboard by taking pictures from the internet or magazines and putting them
together to give an idea of the mood for an idea
·
Draw your
idea, this doesn’t have to be an amazing drawing, simple stick figures can work
as well, as long as the idea is made clear by just the pictures.
You then judge the ideas you shaped by using a technique where you go
through feelings, pros and cons.
Go through the ideas with the
aforementioned steps, don’t take too long (1 minute max) and make sure to keep
them separated when discussing.
Finally you enrich your ideas by looking at the
pros and cons from the previous step, and taking the most important ones for
each idea (2 or 3 pros or cons), then thinking of ways to tackle the cons.
Then you arrive back at shaping, this time you look at how you
can present the idea(s) to your client.
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