Well this week has been chaotic. It is probably the busiest week of the year for me so engaging with the content this week has been challenging. I did not want to get behind so it has taken a monumental push today to try and get through things. Thankfully my project management was there to hold my hand all the way through.
So this week has been about exploring creativity and looking at my own creative process. It has opened my eyes to a couple of new schools of thought, which is nice, and given me some ideas for some new things to try.
My Process
Something I wrote about earlier in the week was my own creative process. As I put at the time
From my experience the creative process has always about following a path through a project.
Research > Idea Generation > Creation > Evaluation.
I have used these pillars in nearly everything I have done, I just change the content of the pillars depending on situation or the project. However I have only realised this is how I do it in the last 10 years, before this it was just done and usually followed the same methods every time.
So as you can see I have an established method and I have used it for a long time. So when we get asked to change it the nasty little no goblins begin to surface themselves. I pushed through them however and went about the rest of the week with open eyes and ears.
Disruption
One of the topics was a video from Professor Tanya Krzywinska on Creativity and Innovation, within the video she references a technique developed by Geoff Petty called ICEDIP (I have written about that here). On further research I really began to understand, and was able to see within myself, the different mindsets that are and can be applied during the creative process. I feel that in combination with my own process I can utilise these different mindsets as content within my pillars.
As you can see I have already thought about where each of the different mindsets could be applied and will be putting this in practice in the coming weeks to see if they fit. So yeah I am trying to disrupt my old routine a little I guess.
Computational Creativity
Well this was a touchy subject for me. My professional self was wondering why anyone would want to put themselves out of a job where as my creative self was enjoying thinking about and researching the applications of this subject.
At this point in time I don’t think I am completely sold on it, but I can see some benefits.
This weeks task
To utilise an ideation technique in order to repurpose an existing artefact. Something I wish I had more time to do but I just did not. Mainly because I hate a lot of the techniques that are out there. Brainstorming is pointless as there is no purpose to it, its just chucking words down on paper. Same with mind maps. Yes I know there is a lot of research and science behind it all but for me they just do no work at all.
Well that is a little harsh I guess. In more content things like brainstorming and mind maps do not work for me because these are things I need to do with other people. Its need to be a collective process not just an individual one. It needs to have more than one source of information to draw from in order to really be beneficial. It also needs time, something I did not have this week.
I went with the mash up technique, something I use a lot as I have a random generator that I have written that basically does this for me. I didn’t use it for this however. I just picked two things I could see and mashed them together. A film poster and some jelly babies.
This is the result
Yes its quick and nasty but it does illustrate the ability to apply a process to even the most simplest of tasks. I even saw a few of the ICEDIP mindsets coming in to play so that was a nice surprise.
Moving Forward
It would be nice to dedicate more time to some of these aspects, thankfully work now is easing off for a while and I am looking forward to getting my teeth into next weeks tasks. This part of the process is important and I feel that I am not really giving it my full attention so I want to change that this week. Plus it looks like we might be prototyping something and I love me a bit of prototyping.
References
Featured Image: Photo by Yi Liu on Unsplash
Krzywinska, T (2021) ‘What is creativity’ [online] Available at [https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/912/pages/week-2-what-is-creativity?module_item_id=54079/] (Accessed 7th June 2021)
Figures
Featured Image: Photo by Yi Liu on Unsplash
Figure 1: Charlish, R (2021) ‘ICEDIP applied to my process’ Created on June 12th 2021
Figure 2: Charlish, R (2021) ‘Jelly Babies in Movies’ Created on June 12th 2021
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