Ideation fit

The reporting that Singapore Armed Forces's recruits doing Basic Military Training (BMT) will be armed with a handheld touchscreen device such as an iPad to sharpen their fighting skills raises the question: Should design schools equally equip new students with similar sets to increase their ideation skills?

Taking a line for a dance

Martha Graham's major contribution to the art of dance was her introduction of a technique and a body of work that, far from depending on classical ballet, was remarkably different from it and highly original in its own right.

But while a classically trained dancer can learn the Graham technique quickly, a Graham dancer cannot subsequently acquire a classical technique. Yet the Graham technique has extended the range of movement available for those originally restricted to classical ballet.

By analogy, could it be that the Graham technique is to classical technique what digital drawing is to classical (traditional) drawing?

When the idea becomes a thing

"People call me a conceptual artist, as if the idea was all, but actually what interests me is what happens when the idea becomes a thing. Ideas are by their nature generalisations, something that can be applied to lots of things. But making art is about making particulars, and that particular something can be the generator of a generalisation." Artist Michael Craig-Martin

Ideator vs Fabricator

Those who are named "artists" are sometimes remote from the physical act of production because crafts people and makers have skills and knowledge of materials that artists usually do not. Says British artist Marc Quinn: "Whenever I have a new idea, we work on finding the technology to do it. It's quite obvious you can't do it all yourself, so I'm not going to pretend I did".

Leaping off with ideas

"I start sketching and trying things until, all of a sudden, something emerges that becomes interesting and I sort of follow it. But it’s intuitive. It’s not preconceived. I don’t have an exact plan of action, and I always feel like I’m leaping off a cliff", says archiect Frank Gehry.

For example, Gehry’s Dr Chau Chak Wing building for the University of Technology Sydney’s Business School was inspired by the idea of a tree-house structure with “a trunk and core of activity and… branches for people to connect and do their private work".

Ideation as craft

Maybe the art of ideation cannot be taught but there's an element of craft
involved. The craft aspect of ideation, then, highlights skills and techniques
needed for representing and presenting ideas in a range of media.

iPad as ideation tool

Given the portability, connectivity, large touch screen and a range of apps (software), such as Evernote (for multimedia notes and voice recording), Ideate (for concept visualisation), or Compendium (for managing and visually organising personal or group digital information sources and then connect ideas to them), the iPad, or similar touchscreen devices, appears a versatile ideation tool.