Ideation Accelerator

The idea for my object-based learning activity stems from a recent classroom situation. I encouraged the students to always generate more ideas than needed, in this case, to generate more research topic ideas. To illustrate my point, I used the visual practice as an analogy to the verbal, in particular informed by Tom and David Kelly’s work Creative Confidence, in which the benefits of many ideas is highlighted. 

Judy Willcock’s remark „The fact that we process and recall and understand really quite little of what we read and hear but so much of what we make and do.“ deeply resonated with me. I wondered if “making and doing” could be used to fuel creative confidence in one’s ability to generate many ideas, both verbal and visual.

The learning aims encompass visual and verbal ideation, creative confidence, aesthetic judgment and drawing skills. The objects I decided to use are translucent 3-dimensional shapes. For all activities, the time constraint and the number of iterations to be created were the lever to increase ideation.

Following Judy Willcock’s framework, I opted for “holding information back about objects” to facilitate visual, intuitive or extra-rational responses. The focus should be on the engagement with the objects, not the objects themselves. (Willcocks,year). 

Timed session plan

Total time for activity: 20 minutes

1. Explaining the exercise 2 min
2. Activity 1 – pile up shapes 3-5 min
3. Activity 2 – draw 5 min
4. Activity 3 – write titles 5 min

„I came to understand the importance of experiential learning, particularly in an art and design context. The fact that we process and recall and understand really quite little of what we read and hear but so much of what we make and do.“

UAL Central Saint Martins, 2018

Session description

During the activity, I observed that the engagement with activity 1 exceeded my expectations in terms of creative output. Participants found extraordinary ways to create new objects. One participant carried his object over to the window to photograph it including a specific background, thus giving their work another dimension and meaning. In the same vein, another participant, used their phone torch to cast light through the translucent shapes (Fig.6). I further observed collaboration (Fig.7). However, activity 2 did not yield the creative output I was looking for. The shapes were mostly replicated rather than used for silhouette finding. Finally, results from activity 3, Title creation, were highly creative and interesting (Fig. 9 to Fig. 12)

Participant feedback and reflection

Activity 1

Participant 1: “I loved playing with the shapes.” [everyone agreed]

Based on my observation and this unison positive feedback, I will use this activity in the future again in various iterations. 

Activity 2

Participant 2: “I am offended by the figurines.” [another one agreed]

I understand the participant’s objection to using an idealised figurine. Admittedly, in this instance, I was ignorant and didn’t give the figurine I used for this session much thought. I’m aware of and embrace the practice and discourse of body inclusivity. 

On another note, I realised that I omitted to think of the difference between generating many ideas or generating more iterations of one concept or idea. The resulting approach to take would be very different, of course. I’ll choose the latter. Therefore, I would change activity 2. I would ask the students to pick their favourite of the objects they created in activity 1 and produce 3 iterations of it by using the shapes, again, then taking pictures of the results. 

Activity 3

Participant 2: “I don’t want to label the creation, I don’t want to put a label on it.”

Due to time restraints I could not clarify this statement nor receive more feedback from other participants. For instance, is a headline as objectionable as a label? What about a written paragraph instead? Be that as it may, I would change this activity to a reflective one, during which the students can reflect in written form (or group discussion) on their intuitive decision making during the exercise. Did it help them to be looser and more productive in their ideation process?

References

Kelley, T. and Kelley, D. (2015) Creative confidence: unleashing the creative potential within us all. Paperback edition. London: William Collins.

UAL Central Saint Martins (2018) Museum & Study Collection: Judy Willcocks Copenhagen Presentation. 27th June. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3O7MM5WuFo