Just a minute!

Generating ideas tend to be a fast moving activity. But what about the development and communication of ideas? Can ideas be squeezed into just a minute, and presented in, say video format? Richard Wiseman, a professor of psychology, says he rarely finds it difficult to squeeze ideas - all of which are backed up by research and developed from his book chapters - into under a minute video. Using YouTube he believes shorter videos are the future of the medium: 'Conventional TV could spend 30 minutes on each of these items but not actually give you any more information. With any creative project, the more restrictions you put on it the more creative you are. With this you just have to be really good at scripting and cut down to the bare bones.'

Play it, Einstein

In his biography of Einstein, Walter Isaacson writes that Einstein often turned to his violin when challenged in his work: 'He would often play the violin in his kitchen late at night, improvising melodies while he pondered complex problems. Then suddenly, in the middle of the playing he would announce excitedly, "I've got it!" As if by inspiration, the answer to the problem would have come to him in the midst of the music'. This suggest that Einstein's mental processing power relied on the dynamic nature of intelligence, or how intelligence is expressed in many different forms, such as analytical, creative or emotional intelligence, or combinations thereof.

Nulla Dies Sine Linea

"No Day Without a Line," is traditionally attributed to the Hellenistic Greek painter Apelles (4th century B.C.E.) by the historian Pliny the Elder, who recorded that Apelles would not let a day pass without at least drawing a line to practice his art. Practising every day, Appelles is said to have attached great value to the drawing of outlines, and the simplicity of design. Moreover, and in the context of ideation, making a start with a line can help develop the idea. In this sense, line drawing becomes a vital part of the creative process, and sketching an ideation tool. As Plato once wrote, "The beginning is the most important part of the work." Or, in the beginning was the line.

Analogue and Digital

Despite digitisation, analogue and physical interaction remain the bedrock for ideation. Indeed pixels and paper are different technologies suited to different tasks in the design process. For example, the analogue mode offers less distraction than screen use. And pen and paper are less mentally tiring and, through its immediacy, easier to navigate and to understand.

Power of pen

Neave Brown, the renowned architect of modernist housing in the 1960s and 1970s for London Borough of Camden, used only pen, ink and paper to design the complex Alexandra Road estate of 520 dwellings, from first ideas to completion. This meant drafting and re-drafting of thousands of detailed drawings, for example, staircases were redrawn up to 40 times to get it right. It meant, as Brown put it, spending long hours 'nose down' at the drafting table. Only when all drawings were complete did Brown's team produce a scale model for presentation purposes. Now, drafting with pen and paper has largely been replaced by CAD tools although the practice of freehand sketching is still alive in the early stages of the design process.

Ideation tools in a digital age

Ideation is crucial for originality and creativity that encourage establishment and development of material culture. Through analysis of usage of ideation tools – sketching, words, model making, and computing - the workshop addresses how to maintain and renew tradition by examining the crucial relationship between analogue and digital means. The investigation is important in the context of a design culture where there is strong interest in digital processes and products, providing examples of how to nurture and sustain innovation through a dynamic mix of ideation tools. The tools will be tested in various ways, their strengths and weaknesses will be evaluated, and malfunction spotted.

3D printing as ideation tool

Make-It-Yourself (MIY) 3D printing is the personal manufacturing process of turning a 3D digital design file into a solid object using open-source 3D printers or printers that come in a box ready to print. Involving both soft- and hard-ware skills, the set-up and operation, however, can be more difficult than it seems. For example, using polymer-based materials, a skip of the printer or glitz in the extruder may ruin the print, a failure that happens when the plastic filament melts and get wrapped around the print head. Or, when the gears on the printer's X and Y axis belts slip on the motor shaft causing the print head not to be properly aligned from layer to layer. Or, when the print head knocks off a part of model, or the object becomes loose from the print-bed. Or, when simply using wrong settings. But print failures, although frustrating, particularly when they occur several hours into the print process (and large-scale objects can take anywhere from 24-48 hours to complete), can be seen as learning since failures are often steps towards new discoveries. Indeed failures can be turned into serendipitous art work, or so called "glitch art". Learning from failure, or trial and error, as embedded in creative processes, then turn 3D printing into an ideation tool.