Generating Ideas

Generating the best idea for a project can sometimes be challenging. A person could have too many ideas that are broad and need to be more focused. They could be fixed on one idea and therefore afraid to try new ideas and develop the complexity. This can restrict creativity therefore I took to some further reading and research of idea-generating methods. I then applied this to my research project.

The Kickstart Catalogue and Osborn's Checklist

•  Have a clear goal in sight – always remind yourself or your team of the goal.

• One question at a time and exhaust the question and pitch ideas to yourself/a group. 

• The morphological matrix is a technique for organised thinking - this will be useful when designing the logo for my project. 

This Kickstart Catalogue and Osborn’s checklist (Pricken and Whittall, 2008) is something I have learnt through my time at university that I refer back to whenever at the idea generation stage for a project. 

The KickStart Catalogue is useful when generating ideas. 

Osborn's checklist 

There are four steps

1. Workout a goal.

2. Apply one of the concepts from the checklist to the goal.

3. Write down all the ideas suggested or make simple doodles.

4. Only when the concept has absolutely nothing more to offer should you choose another concept from the checklist.

Mind maps

The technique of mind mapping is one I have used many times when in the idea generation stage, it is effective as I get all my thoughts and ideas onto the page. "Mind mapping, which was introduced by the English scholar Tony Buzan, is a method used to generate, visualise the structure, and classify ideas in order to help human memorise" (Kedaj, Pavlíček, and Hanzlík, 2014, p.240). This allows for key ideas to be identified and expanded upon in the project. With this research in mind, I have created my own mind map to explore my final project ideas further. 

Mind map of Ideas

Design Thinking

"Design Thinking is a human-centered creative problem-solving process that provides the 'how-to' in order to think 'outside the box'" (Oceanit, 2019). It is a five-step process made famous by David Kelley (See image). 

Design Thinking 5 Steps 

However, this method reduces the complexity when it comes to the creative problem-solving mindset, condensing it into five steps makes it seem easier when it is not. I am interested to see what this process is like with my own project in order to gain more of an understanding of it. On reflection of the idea generation methods, I have carried out the mind map as seen above however I will be incorporate more of these methods throughout the research blog e.g using the morphological matrix when it comes to design my logo for the project. 

Bibliography: 

Kedaj P., Pavlíček J., Hanzlík, P. 2014. Effective Mind Maps in E-learning. 3(3), pp.239-250.

Oceanit. 2019. Design Thinking. [Online]. [Accessed 9th October 2019]. Available from: https://www.oceanit.com/services/design-thinking 

Pricken, M., & Whittall, M. 2008. Creative advertising : ideas and techniques from the world’s best campaigns. (New edition). London: Thames & Hudson.