I’ve always had this curiosity. I’ve often not known what to do with it…often it leads me to ask uncomfortable questions - possibly just to see the reaction that it brings. In some ways it has become a sort of catchcry for me
Looking back at my posts at CPH127 I notice I seem to use the word regularly…
"As a design professional, one cannot help but be curious about how far the business
world will take this new - found love…""I’m becoming curious about how the motivation behind the desire for innovation
affects the outcome…"
How curious is that?
What am I doing? Playing with words I guess…
We’ve all read about T shaped people…
They have a principal skill that describes the vertical leg of the T
– they’re mechanical engineers or industrial designers. But they are
so empathetic that they can branch out into other skills, such as
anthropology, and do them as well. They are able to explore insights
from many different perspectives and recognize patterns of behavior
that point to a universal human need. That’s what you’re after at this
point — patterns that yield ideas.These teams operate in a highly experiential manner. You don’t put
them in bland conference rooms and ask them to generate great ideas.
You send them out into the world, and they return with many artifacts
– notes, photos, maybe even recordings of what they’ve seen and heard.
The walls of their project rooms are soon plastered with imagery,
diagrams, flow charts, and other ephemera. The entire team is engaged
in collective idea-making: They explore observations very quickly and
build on one another’s insights. In this way, they generate richer,
stronger ideas that are hardwired to the marketplace, because all of
their observations come directly from the real world.
<>
I’d argue that this process is a serious kind of play. That notion of identifying patterns and turning that into ideas interests me. I recall a moment many years ago when a senior colleague said, while looking at some photography I had created,"…oh, you’re a pattern maker…" At the time I had an uneasy feeling that the comment was a veiled put down. These days, I am very happy to be a "pattern maker". In this context I want to come back to the idea of play however…
What I liked about this article at Fast Company is the first of the 7 steps to "personal brilliance"…
1. Think Like A Child
2. Look Beyond the Obvious
3. Fire Your Inner Critic
4. Vary Your Daily Routine
5. Identify the Most Impossible Solutions
6. Work Like a Detective
7. Try New Things
Think like a child…it reminds me of a recent post by Hans that started to hint about the value of play in the creative process. The notion that play can engender work…good designers know this - some others
I suspect will never "get" it. It seems perverse - work is not meant to be fun - is it?
I wanna write more on this 
That long wonderful list of creative thinking techniques posted recently [can’t find the link :-|] is like a compendium of games…opportunities for play!
Let’s get curious…
Oh, I got the lead from the Creative Generalist
3 comments so far
Ian,
Thanks for tieing in with my Fast Company post. Notice that tips 2-7 are in fact ways to Think Like A Child. You hit on the “fun” key.
For more curiosity info check out my article, Curiosity Jump Starts Your Personal Brilliance.
Sorry the url for that article is http://www.mypersonalbrilliance.com/curiosity/
Thanks Jim,
Yes fun is imporant. I can’t see how diminishing the “fun” quotient in learning, design process, and innovation strategising can be positive.
The point of “thinking like a child” is the openess to new possibility that is engendered. That’s where the opportunity is - and I think the fun as well. The fun element is essential. I’ve found that more is achieved when the task at hand is enjoyable.
The Fast Company post resonated with my thinking about curiosity and fun in the design process. It is something I’ve been reflecting about prompted by some recent posts on CPH127.
Thanks for the link.