Face-to-face versus virtual ideation

The Covid pandemic meant that many creatives were obliged to work virtually or online, away from offices and colleagues. And while some design businesses found that online working was more cost-effective than working face-to-face, or provided an opportunity to link up more resources geographically allowing for more flow and application of new ideas,.the return in 2022 of the annual events of London Crafts Week, and Clarkenwell Design Week, witnessed how creatives had much missed the face-to-face and collaborative aspects of design. In fact, reseach has shown (see source, below), and whether in practice or education, that designers typically find face-to-face teams more successful than virtual teams when working on a new product or service. This is so because generating new and practical design ideas is the process of interpersonal, face-to-face discussion that leads to discovery and innovation and is a part of a complex social and cultural system. Indeed, ideation is knowledge and new knowledge is best created when existing knowledge is shared amongst team members. Source: https://www.sesp.northwestern.edu/masters-learning-and-organizational-change/knowledge-lens/stories/2014/are-face-to-face-teams-more-creative-than-virtual-teams.html

Ideation ways

A multisensory approach to ideation, using a range of tools, materials and methods, as facilitated by the workshop, enhances the transformative experience of the creative process. Driven by curiosity, designers get a buzz out of  tactile, hands-on ways of ideation that embrace traditional artisanal practices while acknowledging digital technologies resulting in new insights and actions. But, also, transformative experiences, and broadening understanding, within the ideation framework, may be achieved through allowing the mind to simply wander, with or without tools and materials immediately at hand. Key, though, to ideation ways, is that the idea is made visible, or concrete, through imagery, artefacts or words - not that dissimilar to how craft work is actualised, as shown both in production (outcome) and process (communication).