CREATIVITY, INNOVATION, AND CHANGE

ExerciseWeek 2

Idea Generation Techniques

Ana Carolina Barbosa Silva, 2013

INTRODUCTION

Week 2 – Idea Generation Techniques Exercise

Link to the course: https://www.coursera.org/course/cic

Step 1: Choose 1 or more techniques Random Stimulus

SCAMPER

Morphological Matrix

Step 2: Watch the videos and read the descriptions for the chosen techniques.Generate ideas for a problem or situation at home, at work or anything else.

Step 3: Complete Idea generation technique questions

Step 4: Fill out the weekly exercise reflection survey

RANDOM STIMULUS

• Idea generation technique chosen: Random Stimulus

• Description: Participants use free association in connection with a random word orimage to generate new ideas

• Reason: It seems like a very challenging technique where you don't have the controlof the situation, because of the "randomness" characteristic

PROBLEM

“How to decrease the noise of Daniel's house?”

• Description: Daniel lives on a simple 3 floors house surrounded by neighbors inalmost every side of it, located on a steep alley. There's no street in front of his house,so there's no vehicle traffic. People (especially children) often join at various points ofthe alley to talk, play, and others noisy activities. Other times, they play loud music athome without considering neighbors' ears.

This situation is more critical at bedtime, when even late at night, loud sounds remain.Or early in a weekend morning, when people in his house want to get more sleepthan normally.

Ima

ge: G

oog

le

WORD: “ERRORS”

• Random Stimulus type chosen: A word

• How Random Stimulus was chosen: I have picked up the nearest book and askedDaniel to choose 2 numbers: one for the page, other for the line. So, I have openedup the book on that page and line and the first word of the line became my randomstimulus word

• Book: “Design Thinking - Uma metodologia para decretar o fim das velhas ideias”,Tim Brown (in portuguese)

• Numbers: 100 and 10

• Word: ERRORS• Ideas generated: 15

WORD: “ERRORS”

WORD: “ERRORS”

• Considerations:

With this first word, I tried to come up with ideas doing direct association with the word. So, despite of achieve 15 ideas, only aproximately 4 are result of this direct association. The others were ideas that I think just came to my mind due to the "creativity imersion" of the moment and I didn't want to waste them.

My conclusion is that is a little difficult to do direct associations to come up with ideas, especially depending on the word raffled, that can be a good creativity ignitor or not.

Due to this result, I decided to choose another word and follow different steps of the process.

WORD: “OPPOSITION”

• How Random Stimulus was chosen: I have picked up the nearest book and asked Daniel to choose 2 numbers: one for the page, other for the line. So, I have opened up the book on that page and line and the first word of the line became my random stimulus word

• Book: “Design Thinking - Uma metodologia para decretar o fim das velhas ideias”, Tim Brown (in portuguese)

• Numbers: 57 and 7

• Word: OPPOSITION• Ideas generated: 8

WORD: “OPPOSITION”

WORD: “OPPOSITION”

• Considerations:

I decided to first list some words that I could associate with the word "opposition", and then try to come up with ideas based on all of those words. This process have worked far better! Because you have more options and these options can be used alone or together to form new ideas. It seems like you "diverge" more due to the range of possibilities. The fact of ending with only 8 ideas I believe doesn't matter much in this case, because I already have had 15 ideas and it's more difficult to come up with more ideas according the increasing of the total of ideas.

My conclusion is that this second process for "Random Stimulus" technique is better than the first ande easier to people of all level and style of creativity.

IDEA SELECTION

If I had to recommend a solution to Daniel, my main parameters would be:

• Cost

• Facility

So I would present him the following options:

• Use earplugs during the sleep

• Make soundproofing just in the bedrooms to allow a better sleep

• Change bedroom locations to the more noiseless places of the house

THANK YOU FOR THE ATTENTION!