Week 1

I have been struggling to decide what to make for my major project.

I decided to do some ideation techniques to come up with some creative solutions.

Brainstorm:

Random links, I picked random items and forced a connection with my problem to create new opportunities and ideas. 

A Mash-up brings odd or unexpected things together to spark fresh ideas through 2 unrelated broad categories. I Combined items from the two lists to ideate as many new products, services or experiences as possible.

20 ideas in 20 minutes

1. You only had $10 dollars to make it? (cost)

2. You had to wear your response? (materiality, performance)

3. It had to be inside a shipping container? (space)

 4. The whole digital world collapsed and there could be no digital component? (materiality)

5. It needed three different touch-points to communicate the one message? (narrative)

6. The target audience was 5 year olds? (audience)

7. The primary colour was orange? (semiotics)

8. Your audience had 1 min to engage with the project? (time)

9. The project had to be viewed from the sky—what is it? (perspective)

10. The project could only be used in the dark? (time)

11. You had $1 million dollars to make it? (cost)

 12. You had to use ten screens? (could be in one place, could be scattered, could be hand-held) (materiality)

13. You were only allowed to use headphones? (audio)

14. If the response was an interpretative dance, where is the stage? (placement)

15. The target audience was an elderly widow? (audience)

16. The project was a sign on the side of the road with three words? (distillation)

17. The target audience had a full day to engage with the project? (time)

18. The project was an installation at the waterfront? (placement)

19. You had to use 100 drinking straws in the response? (do they make something? do they bring people together? are they used for drinking or something else?)

20. It was at Disneyland? (placement)

Opposites/worst ideas

Worst ideas tries to solve the problem in a reversed way so that instead of asking how to solve the problem, it focuses on how to achieve the opposite result of what is expected. It helped me to understand the problem and allowed me to extract and come up with great ideas from the bad ones. By asking how can I make the problem worse or what makes the problem a problem to reach solutions that ordinary thinking methods do not achieve.

Once I generated all the bad ideas, I challenged myself to turn these into good ones by considering its opposites or aspects that might inspire good ones. Taking out the worst attribute and replacing it with something else to create inspiration: