Lofty ideas

Technology, or the science of craft, has facilitated ideation throughout history and has given rise to a broad range of ideation tools. And when aviation became widely available in the 1920s onwards, it seemed only natural that designers should take to the skies to gain a new perspective or bird's-eye view of mother earth. Or, as the French writer and pioneering aviator Saint-Exupery put it: 'The aeroplane is not an end in itself: it is a tool, like a plough'. The "top-down" tool enabled Le Corbusier, the architect and urbanist, to fly over vast stretches of South America, an experience which afforded him an aerial view which up til then had only been an imaginary view. Le Corbusier explains: 'In the plane I had my sketchbook as everything became clear to me I sketched. I expressed the ideas of modern planning.' In fact, the impact of the aerial view prompted Le Corbusier to write the Radiant City (published in 1933), a modern doctrine of urbanisation. Today, of course, aerial views are commonplace, from drones to web mapping, or geodata processing inspiring and fascilitating new ideas across design fields.

Research as an ideation tool

Research is a vital element in the design process, and although described variously in terms such as research-based design, research-driven design or research-focused design, the meaning is similar, that is, research helps designers better understand and formulate the problem towards finding a solution that meets a user's needs, wants and goals. And while there are many types of design research, there are two research methods that are particularly helpful at the early stage of the design process, or the ideation phase: Exploratory and Generative. The explorative method is useful to gain background information, where little or none is known about the problem in order to help frame the problem (what, why, how), whereas generative research, based on existing data (from sources such as the internet, books, or articles) can help generate ideas and therefore solutions, and whether new or an improvement in an existing problem.