Reflective ideation

Efforts to get the ideas flowing - "Just begin" (see the previous blog entry) - are enhanced through capturing and reflecting on the process of generating and developing ideas. That is, to keep a sketchbook, notebook or visual diary to help track and reflect on the ideation process as it happens, or "reflection-in-action" (Schön 1991). Capturing and reflecting on the ideas generated, moreover, will help raise the awareness not only of what ideation tools and techniques are being used in the process but also feelings, sensations and reactions associated with the process. That is, keeping track of what happens during the ideation process is turning ideation into a recorded learning experience.

Just begin

John Cage (1912-1992), the US composer and philosopher, knew well the challenges of just getting started. For him, music was a complete universe that could be entered at any point to find something to work with: 'Begin anywhere', he advised. And so with design and the ideation workshop. But that is not to say that ideation begins with a clean slate or that the mind starts blank (tabula rasa). In reality, nobody begins from scratch. Even in computer science, AI included, an initial data-set or knowledge-base is placed there by the human designer. And so, every designer consciously or not, draws on a reservoir of past ideas and forms, and, as a practice unfolds, past experience: incomplete projects, intuitions and half-formed thoughts that have been put aside to revisit later. But also, a project is never fully contained in its beginning. That is, the first sketch is just that: a beginning, an intuition to be developed, and whatever is drawn there will change and evolve as it is fleshed out. If there is no capacity for change, it’s a flawed beginning. The role of drawing, then, as a fluid medium of thought is a place where designers can set down and test ideas, a medium always incomplete. More, https://drawingmatter.org/just-begin/