Creativity and context

How can The Information School raise awareness of it's existence?

Our faculty, student, and staff space in Mary Gates and other buildings are invisible.

Pair up and ideate in isolation (5 min)

Find a partner and ideate solutions to this problem using your knowledge and memory.

Ideate in context (20 min)

• Navigate the building and the grounds
• Observe it's structure, talk to its inhabitants, and use your surroundings to generate as many ideas as possible.
• Return in 20 minutes and we'll reflect on how this affected your ideation.

Synthesize (15 min)

(10 min) Form groups of 3 or 4 and discuss your insights and ideas.

(5 min) Combine design idea in as many design ideas as possible.

Brainstorm (15 min)

When compared to individual ideation, brainstorming is not a very productive form of idea generation because of:

• Fear of critique
• Social loafing (assuming others will do the work), and
• Production blocking (only one person can talk at a time)

To get around these, there are brainstorming rules:

• Focus on quantity
• Withhold criticism
• Unusual ideas are welcome
• Combine and improve ideas
• Elect a notetaker
• Write your own ideas while others are talking

We will go around the class and each person will be able to propose a new idea or will be able to build on an already posed idea (that and...)

Discuss (10 min)

What effect did being in context have on your ideation?

What did it feel like to brainstorm relative to our earlier ideation?

Credit (5min)

Sign the activity sheet for credit.