Alph Bingham

Alph Bingham’s presented a great metaphorical question: are you organized for Edison or Archimedes? Here is the link

Have a look!

Simplicity and Desktop

To films from TED, I’m not sure if it is directly related t creativity, but I found them both interesting and fun.

The first one is about simplicity; the guy is John Maeda, a programmer and an artist. He has written the book: The Laws Of Simplicity, witch I would like to recommend you to read. It offers 10 rules and 3 keys for living and working. You can also find the laws on his webpage.

The second film shows a new way of organizing the desktop. The software BumpTop is developed of Anand Agarawala. The traditional “point-and-click” movement is replaced with “push-and-pull” that relate to the old fashion physical desktop.

Enjoy!

Sleep on it

For the first time in my life I get a newspaper in my mailbox every day. Got the newspaper free for four weeks, during the period I almost decided to keep on with it. When this guy called me to ask if I would like to keep it, I just had to buy it. Dagsavisen is a very good newspaper, they present the material in a professional way. You can’t compare it to some of the more tabloid newspapers on the market where most of the “news” are about celebrities and their way of life.

The reason that I mention Dagsavisen is because that every Saturday, they got an extra newspaper with articles from The New York Times. This time they had some articles on sleeping and dreaming and how it affects the human. Like to read it? This will send you to the right place.

“We think what’s happening during the sleep is that you open the aperture of memory and are able to see this bigger picture” said Matthew Walker, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley.

The fact that the brain is working hard during the might is fascinating; I wonder if it ever takes some time off, maybe I have to wait for my death? But then it’s kind of late…

When I’m in the middle of a start up or in a tough period during a project I have noticed that the brain is working hard when I’m trying to go to sleep. Some times it’s quite annoying, turning on the light every 6th minute to draw or write down what ever occurred as a brilliant idea. Some times it is a good one!

If the brain I working with the bigger picture during the night it might be a good idea to go to sleep, even when you are in a lace of time. During the time that your head is on the pillow it is solving some of the most difficult problems you got on your mind. All this during the rest, it’s like having a servant that cleans your house, prepare the food and fix up the garden wile you self is relaxing with a good book or so.


I wonder if it is possible to control the activity of the brain so that I’m able to create more ideas when I need them. What kind of activity is the best to facilitate the brain so it creates a lot of ideas? It happens that I forget an appointment, the most annoying is when I remember it by my self, but of course to late. How can I stimulate the brain in such way that it wont forget things I’ve got to remember? It’s not a big problem, as long as I remember to write the important stuff in the calendar on my phone…

…one of the things I see as a grown up thing is to subscribe on a newspaper, I guess that makes me one step closer to grow up?

A cup of coffee

This is a good one. I have many times noticed that it is easier to come up with problems and challenges during a project. This technique might be useful.

Dance

I'm really not in to this dancing thing, but one of my best friends is really god. Found this on TED, it's a lot of things on this site. Have a look!

”Push it to it’s extreme

Lecture with Natasha Barrett 09.10.07

It was a lot of technical discussions during this lecture, it was fun to listen to a person with so much knowledge on a field of such a complexity. One thing is to know a lot, a totally different thing is to talk about it in a way so it makes sense to an audience without the same interest. Ok, at some point I lost it completely…”psychoacoustics”?

Recording sound, often sounds of an familiar object/situation in an unfamiliar context. Have you ever heard the sound of a glacier heard from underneath the water? Or the sound of a waterfall from underneath the water? Putting the microphone in an environment that now one has ever done before that is one of the way she works.

She was really in to this 3 dimensional sound, and to keep the sound picture as the listener was mowing around in the room. She created an illusion that the sound was in the room, it was a point in space.

The way she was working was to pick out small things, details and push them out to it’s extreme. This way she was able to find new expressions of familiar sounds.

Here is Natasha’s website, have a look.

Slagkraft

The launch of the book “Slagkraft” written of Erik Lerdal

The book Slagkraft was launched at DogA Sep.25. Together with Erik was our own Simon Clatworthy who said some words of the challenges you will face when you try to differentiate from your competitors. Ragnar Johnasen, from the marketing department in Orkla, who emphasized the ability to push your ideas further into concepts. Then Stig Haug, from Stig&Stein, talking about his dream. The dream was to work together with unusual people with desires and luck. A guy from Tandberg said that they used the patent processes to develop new products.

They had focus on the same thing, but in different ways. The gold was to develop in some way, but they had all their way of doing so. Have started reading the book (it’s in Norwegian) this way I may find or develop my own way of working with the process of creativity. Have only read the first couple of chapters, have a good first impression.

When I’m talking about books I would like to recommend the book of Stig Haug with the title: Kreativ ABC (also in Norwegian…). It’s no problem to read trough it during one afternoon. At some points it’s great fun!

Took some pictures form the last lecture (18.09.07) with Eva Brand, during the day we where playing each other’s creative games.

Business card

I was surfing around the net for some information about the creative game, when I found this article. If you got time I think you should read it. It’s about a guy who stared to draw simple things on the back of the business card.

He sat in a bar, tired, and a burned out of the work he was doing, when he started to scribble down easy cartoon-like drawings. This has developed to some kind of business.

It is possible to down load PDF from the site.

Children and creativity

Found this interesting lecture of a guy named Sir Ken Robinson. Pleace have a look!

Exploratory Design Games

We had a lecture with Eva Brandt about games that can start a creative process. We had some discussions on what creative is and what it might not be. We ended up with a list of words that we associated with “Creativity” and “Problem solving”.

Eva Brandt has done a lot of interesting work on the topic: Exploratory Design Games. The games are ways of understanding some of the different needs of user have, sometimes even the hidden needs as well. The game is a tool to explore and to get an understanding.

The participants in a section of gaming are often people with different background; marketing, engineer, designer, doctor, user to name some. Common for the group members are that they in some way have an interest in the current project.

There are a lot of different games, some are to get an insight in the user situation, some are to understand an already existing pattern of some character, and some involves the user some doesn’t. Some use scenarios to shed light on some of the possibilities. But I guess that the common for them are that they tend to solve some kind of problem.

We did try one version of gaming: The User Game. The aim of this game is to get a better insight of the user using short video snippets and a set of pictures and words. In this way we tried to create a picture of the user.

Still haven’t decided on what I’m going to write about in my article. But I got some ideas. “Creativity – can it be harmful/dangerous?” or “Creativity without any limit – simple?” or “How can the user take part of the creative process?” or “Division – make a big problem of a lot of small ones”

Who to?

How do you work…. how do you get your ideas? This was one of the questions who was discussed during the visit at Gallery K at Mikkel McAlinden’s exhibition “Absence”

There is no right and wrong method when you are trying to solve a problem in a creative way. …solving a problem in a creative way…. Every human is creative, each day, many times a day. We just don’t think of it as being creative; when we try to brush our teeth’s, hanging up clothes, making breakfast and talking in the phone all at the same time! That is creativity in practice!

Some of the ideas just pop up out of nothing. But most of the ideas are hard work, and a lot of frustrations. They might be a product of many small fragments of ideas put together. Frustration is a very important keyword in the creative process. Simon claims that the more frustration, the better. The ability to keep up working with a problem/idea and don’t stop when you are feed up is very important. But how can we train that ability?

The first two weeks

I’m not quite sure on what I’ll going to write on this blogg, but I guess it should bee something about creativity? I’m planning to write as much as possible in English, to get some practice, so please be patient with my spelling.

The last two weeks have been really exciting! The first day at AHO was a bit unorganised, so the first impression was not that good. But the following days have been very good.

Service design and Exploring Creativity are the two courses that I’m attending to the next four months. Both of the courses was my second choice, but I’m quite happy that I was forced to take exactly those two.

As a product designer, with focus only on the physical product, the course about Service Design will broaden my view on design. The tutors are so inspiring; it’s no doubt that they love their field. Most of the lectures are in English; witch at times can be a bit hard to follow. The good thing is that I’m getting a chance to practice my English!

This blogg is one of part of the deliverables at the course of Exploring Creativity. The first lecture was quite good and informing. I didn’t know any about the course before I entered the room, started with an open mind. The lecture was mostly information about the course and a quick presentation and our expectations of the course.

Simon introduced us for a variation of Brainstorm; Brain writing. We individually wrote down all the ideas on a clearly defined topic. Then we did this section where we brainstormed in a group.

This week we are going to Gallery K. I think it’s some artist with some pictures?