Jan Capjon on interaction in innovative processes

This tuesday Jan Capjon lectured about interaction in innovative processes, It seems like hardcore modeling is coming back on the table, literally :)
He uses childsplay as a metaphore. When kids play it is usually around some kind of toy, this is a good way to see professional developers too. When this kind of people gather around a task, they will have different ways of thinking. This can result in bad communication, leading to unnessesary and unwanted expensive errors. I have always been a fan of modeling, so I embraced this lecture. Together with IDEO´s way of doing things, this will settle as a good way to go for me...

Tasks further on.....

What do theory say about IDEO?
What do others say about IDEO?


We compare this to what IDEO says, and write an essay on the result.

Getting there with IDEO´s way of thinking

Mr. Østmo and myself will serach IDEO´s strategies to secure quality in innovative processes.
We are reading two books, The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm, and The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO's Strategies for Defeating the Devil's Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization, and we will focus on how to implement their methodes in our work.
IDEO´s way of working has a lot to do with having fun and cross-diciplinary work situasions.
Daily brainstormers and frequent coffe brakes seems to make the difference in reaching out of the box.

Since both Øyvind and myself attended the course; Visual anthropology for designers, we have an understanding of the anthropologic angle.
The ten faces of innovation describes 10 different innovator-archetypes, and their way of thinking.

The Ten Faces are:

The Anthropologist, observes the way people behave with a "beginner's mind" to observe what is really going on

The Experimenter, prototypes, and prototypes again, does a lot of errors, but learn equally.

The Cross-Pollinator, explores other industries and cultures and then translates what they find into their ongoing project.

The Hurdler, works to overcome obstacles and roadblocks by outsmarting them.

The Collaborator, "often leads from the middle of the pack" to bring people together and build new solutions.

The Director, brings together talented people and provides an environment and direction fo them to spark their creative talents.

The Experience Architect, looks to appeal to people's deep needs by developing compelling experiences.

The Set Designer, creates environments that allow team members to do their best work.

The Caregiver, looks to serve customers in a way that is beyond standard service.

The Storyteller, carries on the tradition of sharing narratives that communicate fundemental emotions or values.

2. session

2. session we looked at different tools to get the juices flowing, creatively :-)
We tried out "random word" witch was good for me, and combined with flickr.com it gives good gestalts of a theme.
The chosen theme of IDEO seems like a right angle for me, and I will talk to a friend who used to work for them in the US. (even try to get him to talk to the course)

After lunch we had Birger Sevaldson (Systematising Creative Computer Use)
as a guest lecturer, together we discussed creativity.
He claims that creativity is external, and that creative surroundings create creativity.
What i got out of this is that, man needs stimuli too be creative, unless you´r a genius/prodigy.
His best tip for me is to avoid the skimata/archetypes/typology.

1. post

I am "Exploring creativity" along with interaction design at AHO, a course, to widen my horizon and keep far fetched ideas a bit longer in processes. As a theme I have chosen to study IDEO´s ideas about creativity, and they´r approach to secure final results.

1. session we talked about what we thought creativity is, there are many way´s to see this, and I think that is more than OK. In discussions wiyh fellow students there is always someone with a different approach, and the synnergie effect in these discussions works good for me.
We recived two articles: "What is the common thread of creativity", and a piece of
"Handbook of creativity". These articles where quite harsch to read, but they contains info on decades and decades of reasearch on creativity. The terms: lateral- and global thinking burned to my mind, the final goal of this course will be to get outside the box.