Ideas Work Shop

Just a short post about the Ideas Workshop I had the other day. Exploring the way we go through our thought process and discovering a process that was developed by Edward De Bono; world renowned to be the leading authority in the field of creative thinking. Our first brief was to create a poster for the London Underground for commuters conveying the message 'obey the rules', without using the technique. 

 We worked in a group and began by quickly scribbling down what the rules were for public transport. For example, 'no feet on chairs' and 'no alcohol'. And came up with the idea of using the London Transport symbol but instead of the bar striking the circle through the middle it went through diagonally, crossing out the rule.

We then began sketching out ideas for the poster. such as one with the altered symbol in the foreground with all the rules in the background. However we decided that this would be too complicated and fussy as commuters are always rushing, the message needed to be simple and clear.

This was our final idea. To have the tube map and instead of the station stop names it would have the rules of the underground. With a strip at the bottom of the poster with the statement, 'Respect the Rules'. For a first draft we were all pleased with the outcome. Though when compared with the groups work who had been given the new technique we were to learn there was big contrast in the range and variety of ideas.


Putting the technique into practice:
The brief: To create a homepage for an eco charity aimed at housewives conveying the message 'Buy Less'.
1) Consider all the factors (make a list of everything that comes in mind regarding eco charity)

2) Dominant Idea: (select the one dominant idea and create another list concentrating on that)

3) Concept Challenge: Reverse/ Exaggerate/ Distort/ Wishful thinking (Take one aspect and play with the idea in an imaginative way with no restrictions)

4) Stepping Stone: Make the idea into a realistic solution for the problem.

5) Random Input: We were given a sheet of random pictures, from a tape measure to a baby being weighed. We had to randomly input one image (we chose pliers) into the idea, for example in the ethos or the website page. We chose pliers in thought that housewives can apply our rules to their home.

6) Visualise 

This way of thinking was brilliant. The range of ideas we came up with as a group and individually were so weird and random yet easily applied into our idea and enabled us to come up with a much more creative and different idea. Our final design was a webpage that is a closed cupboard with the words, "New Wonder Products Inside". When the words are clicked on the cupboards are opened and all the products are everyday items, such as lemon, vinegar and bi carbonate of soda. Each item as a price point star coming off it when you hover the mouse which gives you details of how you can use the everyday objects as cleaning appliances...therefore saving money an buying less!