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?