Discuss: Saving the Spark: Developing Creative Ideas
by Mark Boulton
- Editorial Comments
2 LOVE YOUR CONFIDENCE....AND RESPECT FOR CLIENTS
First, I loved the brief brief idea, and will start using it in my work.
I found it interesting that you include the client in such a fundamental meeting. So much writing on the web focuses on excluding the client from being involved in actual idea-generation. It takes some confidence in yourself to skillfully handle a meeting like this. I have three questions:
1) Have you had any resistance from clients to the set of “rules” you set down at the beginning of the meeting?
2) Have you found that many clients have generated great ideas in these sessions, or is the usefulness of these meetings geared more to giving them a sense of buying into the final ideas?
3) Does a facilitator always need special training (would these be university classes?) or are there simply special characteristics to look for when hiring someone to fill this position? Do you bring this person in just for these sessions, or is this person also a designer or project manager on your team?
posted at 07:46 pm on June 3, 2008 by Carolyn Wood
3
Thanks for your comment, Carolyn.
To answer your questions:
1. Yes, I’ve had resistance. In fact, I’ve had senior management walk out of sessions like this because they’re not getting their own way. Let’s remember, potentially, there will be a lot of egos in the room, so they need to be delicately handled. A good way of doing this is laying down the law right at the beginning of a session. Specifically, I make a strong point of mentioning the ‘No Pulling Rank’ rule. This seems to put many people, particularly management, at ease.
2. It does a few things. Firstly, they feel they are involved right from the start. It shows them you value their opinion, and also that they have valued ideas to contribute.
I have found that a lot of clients have really good ideas once pushed and squeezed a little — which is what these sessions are all about.
3. A trained facilitator, at least for your first couple of sessions, would be very valuable. If you don’t have access to them, or indeed if you don’t have the budget, then this is something you can do yourself. Getting people started with ideas generation isn’t the difficult bit. The difficulty comes in capturing those little sparks of ideas, knowing when to move on, and of course, having the energy to keep reinforcing those rules.
Hope that goes some way to answer your questions.
posted at 07:57 pm on June 3, 2008 by Mark Boulton
4 Brainstorming
@Srdjan Pejic: “Most people advocate against brainstorming and especially group brainstorming.”
I would hazard a guess that those people have never experienced brainstorming done right.
posted at 10:45 pm on June 3, 2008 by Joseph P. Dempsey, Sr.
5 facilitators are key
I have seen to many ‘creative brainstorming’ sessions without facilitators. It basically turns into a normal meeting and exchanging ideas. But there has to be made a difference; brainstorming to think about a problem and find a common approach or brainstorming to come up with creative solutions. For the latter you definitely need a facilitator and in most cases not only the brainstorming technique but a combination of different techniques such as brainwriting, lateral thinking etc.
posted at 11:39 am on June 4, 2008 by Interaction design
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‘creative’ people are not a league apart from normal, people as mentioned above a meeting turns in to a arena for idea throwing.
The main strength i feel that ‘creative’ people have is the ability to efficiently critique and improve ideas.
posted at 09:12 pm on June 4, 2008 by Don Ace
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Once the first burst out of the way, and all the preconceived and obvious ideas have been recorded, it’s the facilitator’s job to begin coaxing the ideas out of the attendees by using stimulus.
This is my favorite part of creativity. There are always the obvious routes to take, the ones that will always work, but you’ve gotta get past that to get to the real gold.
I’m designing some packaging for my band’s next CD, and the album title brings to mind very literal imagery. However, once we listed the obvious ideas and got them out of the way, we finally started to get more conceptual and really communicate the feel rather than stuff the message down people’s throats in an apparent and uninspired way.
Great article, Mark! Even though we might subconsciously already know some of this stuff, it’s great to hear/see it verbalized by someone who can write intelligently about it. That’s what makes it stick.
posted at 09:27 pm on June 4, 2008 by Dan Mall
8 Good examples
A good read, Mark. I especially liked your examples of The Four R’s. So many articles are written with only the theory, and no real examples.
Kinda off topic, but how’s the developemnt and design for Flow coming along?
posted at 10:15 pm on June 4, 2008 by Tor Løvskogen Bollingmo
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Thanks Mark.
I like the example. There are also many other ways to go about squeezing inspiration.
More often then not i do get sparks of inspiration from nowhere but i don’t wait for them to happen.
Thanks again.
posted at 10:40 am on June 5, 2008 by James Jeffery
10 I liked the magic up concept
I call it "creativity on demand".
I find, too, that there are obvious presentational scenarios, and then there are the more creative approaches that may or may not satisfy the needs of the project. It all depends on what you’re trying to "say" and what might be best ways to present that.
posted at 04:17 pm on June 8, 2008 by Diane Vigil
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Interesting article. Most people advocate against brainstorming and especially group brainstorming.
I’ll give this a shot. Sounds like something that’s structured enough to be able to follow easily.
posted at 06:53 pm on June 3, 2008 by Srdjan Pejic