Eivind Bårdsen | Graphic and logo design from the Sunshine Coast

In this post I want to share some techniques designed to come up with creative ideas. These can be used when trying to come up with ideas for your designs, but also in other situations such as writing, business innovation and more. Remember that creativity is not something you either ‘have’ or ‘have not’, it is a skill that can be developed through determination.

First, some principles for idea generation

In order to come up with some good ideas, we necessarily need to generate some not-so-good-ones as well. That’s why it’s important to be open, accept and write down all ideas.

The idea generating stage is not the time to be judgemental. We want as many ideas as possible before we decide some are better than other.

Forced relationships

The concept of forced relationships is to come up with new ideas by combining two normally unrelated ideas. By forcing ourselves to think of a connection between them, we will be able to generate ideas that may be useful.

One way of doing this is to open a dictionary and point at a random word. Another, more high-tech way is to visit a random word generator.

For example, if the problem is marinating food and the random word is desert, possible solutions could be to marinate something using condensed air or dig a hole in the sand. Or to marinate something in the sun, such as sun-dried tomatoes.

Excursions

When I think about the word excursion, images of maps, mushroom picking and insect-gathering comes to mind. In creativity, an excursion is more of a mental exercise where you look elsewhere for solutions.

One example is the ‘career excursion’. Here, we take on the role of someone in a different career or situation than our own, and ask questions such as:

If I were a dancer, a fireman, an oil-driller, a carpenter, a secretary or an accountant,
What would I think of this? What would I use this for? How would I want to change things?

A variation of this excursion is to use well-known characters and ask what would Sherlock Holmes, John McCain, Captain Picard or my neighbour think of this?

Scamper

Scamper is short for substitute, combine, adapt, modify ( or magnify or minify), put to other uses, eliminate and reverse ( or rearrange). Using the scamper framework to generate ideas is as simple as asking questions such as:

• What else can I use? (substitute)
• What could be added to this? (combine)
• What else is like this? (adapt)
• Can I use a different angle? (modify)
• Can it be used in a different way? (put to other uses)
• Can I remove something? (eliminate)
• Can I use another layout? (rearrange)

What’s next?

When you have generated a number of ideas, it’s time to look at which ones you want to go further with or which ones you want to sketch on paper. This is where you can flesh out some ideas in a mind map.

These are some creativity techniques you can use in almost any situation, alone or in groups. Just remember to be open and accept every idea—you never know where it will lead you.

Do you know any other idea generating techniques? Please share in the comments!

Inspiration: Hicks, MJ 2004, ‘Chapter 7: Ideation’ in Problem solving and decision making: Hard, soft and creative approaches, 2nd edn, Thomson Learning, UK.
de Bono, E 2004, How to have a beautiful mind, Vermillion, London.