Uber tool

Does the ubiquitous networked info-media environment encourage designers to look for and source ideas from the web rather than creating ideas through independent thinking and doing? Or feeding the creative process with online ready-made images through easy, speedy clicks rather than using more fiddly and time-consuming ideation tools such as freehand drawing and sketch modelling? But as the web and engineered digital environments, such as virtual reality games, gain design importance, is there a risk that the power of computing becomes an Uber tool for shaping and communicating ideas but with reduced human reflection or deliberation? Or, when algorithms produce solutions, is critical thinking or the human hand just getting in the way?

Physical ideation

While the written design brief encourages responses using words (written and spoken), words alone are insufficient to express visual ideas. And so it is good ideation practice to remind oneself of the material aspects of design by using physical ideation tools such as pencils, card, modelling clay and scalpels for making drawings, collages or sketch models. That is, a reminder that ideation is also a physical hands-on activity, not just a verbal experience.

Ideas probe

As designers become more and more engaged in interactive and collaborative big data environments of great social and cultural diversity so the cultural probe can prove useful in the ideation process. The probe can take many forms, such as diaries and visual journals, and both in analog and digital formats, and can be seen as an ideation tool for gathering data about people's thoughts and feelings and their interactions and experiences to stimulate designers' creativity.

Creative ABC

Design ideation involves many ways of thinking and doing and communicating. As such ideation can be seen as a variety of creative processes which can be broken into many small stages, including iterations, to explore all the possibilities for an idea. Some of these processes may be described in the form of a simple ABC: A for Assemblage, or for translating 2D abstract drawings into 3D forms using techniques such as sketch modelling for new things and spaces; B for Bricolage, or for improvising in a DIY mode using a range of materials transforming intuitive responses into physical things, and; C for Collage, or for combining interesting images to create new compositions using means such as story boarding that evoke a mood or illustrate a vision for new products or places.

Computational design

Rather than using software to draw and analyse a designer’s vision, as typically happens with CAD programs, computational design tools such as Autodesk wants to use that computing power to generate the idea itself—by running through a nearly infinite number of ways to build the same product.

According to Autodesk, here’s how it works. You type in a set of constraints for the product, say a chair. Then an algorithm will go through a nearly infinite set of results and head towards ones that are going to satisfy the designer. The program might start off with 1,000 ways to make the same chair, and then intermix what it sees as the most effective components of those 1,000 chairs to make 1,000 new options.

As a computer isn't constrained by preconceived notions of what a chair should look like, it goes through a million iterations of the same chair in the time that it would take the designer to describe just one. It's a process that can be applied to everything that involves drawing things including buildings, cars and consumer products. But it isn’t aimed at replacing human insight: people are still better at making more subjective selections over issues such as aesthetics. Yet algorithm-based design does serve up a panoply of options helping designers generate and develop ideas.

Instant ideation

In the digital age, when surrounded by technology that seems able to meet every need virtually instantly, we also seem less likely to tolerate waiting whether for a coffee to be served or for a message or image to be received. But what impact does the 24/7 digital culture with its lack of patience and instant gratification have on learning and developing analogue ideation skills which take time and effort to build? When digital technology can meet designers' needs for visualising ideas at gigabit speed why bother with the time-consuming skills of freehand drawing and modelmaking by hand? Or is this a stereotypical description of digital ideation tools that overlooks the value of shaping, forming and expressing ideas in a more reflective mode using analogue tools? Such comparison of tools, however, raises the question of "validity" - how to "prove' that one set of ideation tools works better or faster than others? The answer, it seems, is best left to practising ideators: Why this, and not that particular tool, or combinations thereof?

Tools of imagination

Of the many tools available to help generate, represent and communicate ideas, drawing tools, analogue or digital, are what foremost spring to mind. Yet in the digital age, computational ideation is pushing the limits of what might be designed, in "what-if" scenarios that free the imagination of physical constraints. In this, ideation tools move beyond CAD towards new methods and technologies for search and exploration of new forms using information modelling software ("ideas as data") and digital fabrication. Digital tools, then, extend traditional approaches of trial-and-error, bricolage and experimentation so intrinsic to design ideation.

Drawing phobia?

Phobias come in many forms: specific phobias such as spiders, height or blood, or social phobias, for example, fear of speaking in public. Presenting and communicating ideas may involve not only addressing a group of people verbally but also using ideation tools such as pen and paper, for example, drawing on a white board or flip chart with marker pen, a social situation which might create anxiety: "Can't draw - won't draw!". Can there then be cases of "drawing phobia"?  It is known that the best way of overcoming a phobia is confronting it. That is, the individual suffering from phobia confronts the source of the phobia instead of avoiding the issue. In case of drawing phobia, if the source of the phobia is lack of confidence using pen and paper to communicate in group situations, the answer seems straightforward: confront the fear through practising drawing in a variety of mediums and situations.

Idea narratives

Ideas per se count for little. They need to be communicated. And the narrative is a powerful means of expressing ideas. One of the vehicles for this is story boarding which helps ideators envision their ideas, or bringing the idea to life. For 2D design ideas, the simple and effective way of telling a story is using words and images where the freehand sketch in particular is a quick and immediate tool to help articulate ideas. For 3D design ideas, the hand-drawn paper prototype, or sketch model, is equally a fast and direct way to communicating ideas. But whatever the ideation tool, it is important to communicate the story at the right level of fidelity. For example, the sketch mode is typically low fidelity: If the narrative is set at a too high fidelity level, say including details of finish, this might distract the audience from the core idea. After all, the idea is a proposal for what might be, not what is.

Sketching anyone?

As the net generation of designers reach for the digital tablet or the smart phone rather than the sketchbook, design students may wonder if they need traditional drawing skills. But there are different types of drawings associated with different stages of the design process. In the early stages, sketching is the more flexible and spontaneous way of drawing. Sketching out ideas, then, is not so much about technical drawing skills, or drawing in the tradition of the arts academy, but about the ability to express first thoughts visually, either on one's own (i-sketch), or in team settings (we-sketch). Sketching, though, like all types of drawings, is a skill that improves through practice.