New year resolution: digital detox?

The risk of digital addiction from excessive use of AI systems may suggest digital detox. That is, commitment to reduce, limit, or exclude the use of digital devices and technology like smartphones and social media platforms. But for ideation, would over-reliance on AI and digital tools dull creativity? This may, at first, seem contradictory as AI-driven design tools such as Adobe Firefly or Midjourney, have become integrated in everyday design practice. Indeed this convergence of human creativity and technology is redefining design processes not just in terms of speed and higher productivity but empowering designers to unlock untapped potential, and create once unimaginable designs. Yet over-reliance on AI systems, such as ChatGPT, may result in creative complacency or automation biases.* If so, critical thinking skills remain important to evaluate chatbot outputs rather than blindly accepting them. Digital detox, then, would mean taking a break from constant connectivity and screen time to reflect on the use of AI and the relationship between human decision-making and technology. But to choose to limit or reduce designer tech time can be challenging in modern-day design practice which is hugely dependent on digital tools and materials. However, there are designerly ways to counter the tendency to rely on, or trust automated technology too much. For example, setting time aside for "thinking with a pencil"! * AI systems tend to take on human biases and amplify them, causing people who use that AI to become more biased themselves. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2024/dec/bias-ai-amplifies-our-own-biases

Ideating in pairs

The workshop setup allows for participants to generate ideas alone, in pairs or small groups (3-4 people - larger groups would become "brainstorming" activity). While designers may prefer to ideate on their own reflecting the tradition of individual creative expression, working solo or in pairs isn't mutually exclusive and switching between the two can be beneficial. Pair work, then, encourages collaboration and provides a platform to initiate, express and pool first thoughts together. From then on, the pair explains, clarifies, amends, and fine-tunes the emerging ideas and may, finally agree on a single idea or arrive at a totally new idea or concept. Moreover, ideating in pairs focuses minds on the design task or theme, sharpens and develops creative thought and organises and communicates the ideas convincingly, both verbally and visually. Ideation in pairs, then, imparts clarity into ideas that might otherwise remain vague. Also, having to listen to, reflect and respond to another's ideas fosters appreciation for diversity and builds respect for design as a discipline.

Prompt engineering and creativity

Designers typically pride themselves on generating their own ideas. But AI models, such as ChatGTP, can help designers generate ideas through prompt engineering, that is, the process of structuring or crafting an instruction in order to produce better outputs (texts or images) from a generative artificial intelligence (AI) model. This may suggest that designers using prompts for idea generation are becoming editors or curators rather than ideators.That is, designers are selecting, refining and promoting the most promising ideas produced by the algorithms. If so, do designers may risk outsourcing their innate spark of creativity to AI models rather than creating the idea itself. Or, is it the case that prompting is simply unlocking a new form of creativity? After all, prompt engineering is a creative activity in that it means experimenting with different phrasing, structures, or contextual elements in the prompt to get the best possible design output from the AI model. This suggests that prompting enhances rather than diminishes human creativity. But even so, as chatbots become more powerful and accessible, designers need to address concerns about authenticity, quality and ethical standards.

Performative ideation

The concept of performativity* - the symbiotic or interdependent relationship between words and actions - can be applied to design ideation. That is, ideation has a performative function in that designing is typically about change and changing the world. The overreaching transformative role or function of design, moreover, means that the workshop participants are agents for change, that is, they are seeking desirable outcomes through design thinking and making. In this performative pursuit, the participants are not so much competing to impress others - "mine idea is better than yours" - but, and more important, to develop designer authenticity and resilience, both collectively, as members of the design community, and individually, in what philosopher Martin Heidegger called our "authentic self".* How To Do Things with Words (Austin 1962) is the foundational text on performative language

Creativity and critical thinking

Creativity and critical thinking are both processes of thought which can be viewed separately - one is expansive, the other reductive - or they can be seen as working together. That is, when designers generate ideas they can either conceptualise something new outside the ordinary, without fear of failure, or make new connections while thinking critically about the ideation process and its outcome, which is critical. That is, creative and critical thinking are not mutually exclusive. But, in practice, critical  thinking is needed to rule out the truly poor or impractical ideas, to produce a workable solution. In this, the designer turns on the inner critic and considers adjustments or alternatives. Moreover, when communicating ideas, the designer, when challenged would allow for feedback in the form of criticism. Being critical, on the other hand, in evaluating ideas, differs from thinking critically in that being critical may suggest a negative attitude, a fault-finding mindset or aversion to risk-taking (negative criticism). Positive criticism, on the other hand, would contribute to how designers understand how creative and critical thinking go hand in hand also raising awereness about personal accountability and wider ideation issues such as ethics and serving the greater good. Ideators, then, at best, are both creative and critical thinkers.

Playfulness and ideation

The ideation workshop embraces the power of playfulness and its creative role in design allowing the participants to follow their curiosity and imagination ("what if ..."). That is, the participants engage in playful thinking and behaviour with the intention to achieve serious objectives, that is, problem-solving. Ideation in this way ("serious play"), is unstructured yet constructive encouraging the participants to think both creatively and critically culminating in representations and presentations of ideas. And not because the participants are following instructions but because the workshop environment and brief invites and facilitates a playful and exploratory mindset. In this, the workshop is inspired by, and builds on pedagogical research* that reflects the workshop as a learning experience through thinking and doing. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666374020300248

Idea et Materia Unum

The workshop reflects ideation as part of everyday, purposeful design activity where, in the process of generating and communicating ideas, idea and matter are one. That is, the idea, as an element of thought becomes matter when the idea, abstract, concrete or visual is explained and presented. In this, the workshop keeps alive the tradition of experiment and the range of materials, new and old, with which the designer works using both analogue and digital tools, from freehand sketching to CAG, that is, whatever works best for the participants. That is, the design task may guide the tool choice but the pick is also a matter of personal preference. This, in turn, reflects how the actualisation of design ideas relies not only on the designer but the commonplace effort of engineers, builders, manufacturers and various skilled trades.