As this week was focussed on Idea Generation, I thought it might be helpful to revisit A Technique for Producing Ideas (ATFPI) by James Webb Young, as I had found it really beneficial last year and wanted to see how my thoughts had changed since I last read it. When reading ATFPI again, a couple of ideas stood out to me in ways they hadn’t last time.
The first was the idea that “an idea results from a new combination of specific knowledge about products and people with general knowledge about life and events”. Having spent the last year doing design projects I feel I have a much better understanding of what this means now. The “general knowledge about life and events” is what we always have, it’s just thoughts we come up with surrounding things in our lives and is what starts the aim of a project. For example, in my autonomous vehicle project from 301, my general knowledge was about my Dad’s experience with having to drive long distances for work from what I had observed of how he generally felt about it, and my own experience of long car journeys. The “specific knowledge of products and people” was the research I did into autonomous vehicles and their benefits, and the user personas I created from interviews about people being affected by long journeys for work. Considering this now, I can see how general knowledge has to be the foundation on which you think there is a problem, and the specific knowledge is the research you do into that area to do to focus on a project. This is something I think is important for me to consider more, as I feel I often am too eager to just to the conclusion with projects, often having a solution in my head when I’ve been given the brief, rather than deciding on general areas that I can explore through research. I think keeping this in mind will stop me rushing into projects and approach them in a more considered way which will allow my ideas to be better and more complete answers to problems.
The other point in the book which I considered more this time, was the idea of just setting the idea aside and doing something else for a while, which will allow the idea to develop at the back of your mind. I actually think this is something I do subconsciously, sort of. When I get invested in a project, I’m eager to work on it as much as possible, so when I get stuck in the ideation process, I either try to plough on with what I’ve got so far, or just leave it out of frustration. Usually, when I leave, it process of it forming in my mind happens naturally, but I feel I do this out of frustration rather than just accepting it as part of my ideation process. I think because I understand this better now, I’ll stop thinking of leaving the idea-alone process as a negative thing I have to do and embrace it more as a key aspect of my ideation process. Hopefully, by doing this, I’ll be able to have a more consistent and positive ideation process for myself.
During this week’s lecture, we went through loads of different idea-generation techniques, which sort of made me realise that I don’t really use any of them except for maybe a mind map. This made me want to consider what idea-generation techniques would actually work for me, based on the type of thinking I think I am.
Brain Storming
Knowing that I find Mind Maps an effective technique, I feel brainstorms are something I should explore more, as they offer that same freedom of thought and looseness, but actually probably offer more, as it makes you less concerned over how the end result looks. I often find myself being concerned over the visual aspect of the mind map, which I realise is ridiculous, but I think exploring brainstorming could work well by having a similar technique which is more freeing.
Connection Method
The connections method was something I wasn’t sure would work for me, as it may have felt too restrictive, but actually I feel could be adapted to work for me. I don’t necessarily like the idea of creating an idea through restrictions, which I think can work, but would be something that frustrates me. I think if I was able to come up with a starting point for an idea, and area even, and then used the connection method as a dice roll until I started to fit things together it could work. This is something I could definitely explore in the future as it would be interesting to see if I could adapt this to work for my sort of mind.
SCAMPER Method
The scamper method was interesting to me, as it acts more as a way to expand ideas rather than generate fully new ideas. I’d say this could be really effective for me as something I’m always keeping in mind, rather than a set process to run an idea through.
What I’ve realised from thinking about these techniques is that my ideas bounce around a lot, and I think restricting myself to tight systematic techniques for idea generation won’t work for me. I’m glad I’ve done this, as I think it will help focus my idea generation in ways which will work for me, rather than just trying to force myself to do techniques that won’t fit me.