Category: Teaching notesPage 1 of 2

Facilitation tools for engineers (and other humans)

This post is still under construction. In this post I am linking together the best of my material on facilitation tools for engineers (and other humans). To facilitate…

Analogue Skills for Design at the University of Bath

Today at the University of Bath I am running a workshop on Analogue Skills for Design. This workshop fuses material from my conceptual design teaching with my observations…

Act it out – embody your ideas

‘Act it Out’ is my favourite technique for shifting creative thinking from the mind to the body. This post is another in my series on Turning the Kalideascope,…

Changing the key system to generate new ideas

Changing the key system is a technique I teach to help people develop new ideas when their thinking has become stuck. It’s one of my techniques for ‘turning…

Rethinking our relationship with our ecosystem

Yesterday I was writing about what to do after declaring a biodiversity emergency. My conclusions was that the process starts with rethinking our relationship to our ecosystem. Not…

Turning the brief into requirements we can test

In my last post I asked how do I know if my ideas are any good? My answer was that a good idea is one that meets the…

How do I know if my ideas are any good?

It’s a simple question. When I ask people what they want to get out of a training course with me on design or creativity, a common answer is…

What is conceptual design? – the defining features

For anyone attending one of my conceptual design training courses, the second question I ask is what is conceptual design*. In this post I’ll give the definition I…

How describing design as a process helps teach design

One of the first questions I ask people in my conceptual design training is can you define design as a process. In this post I explore why describing…

The Designer’s Paradox – the key to unlocking the brief

For me the Designer’s Paradox is a key concept in helping people understand what the process of design is. The term was coined by my colleague at Think…

Apply the OOOOOO

In my second post on building creative surplus – the time and energy we need to invest in creative thinking – I describe the OOOOOO, an approach for…

Creative surplus and how to get some

Creative surplus is what you invest in order to create new ideas. Like operating surplus – or profit – it is what is left over when an organisation…

Think, feel, do – shorter emails

I picked up this tip at home yesterday – thanks Mary. It’s a formula for getting to the point when writing emails. What do you want the person…

Two facilitation lessons from Strictly

Facilitation means making something easier. It isn’t about controlling; it’s about following, listening and enabling. In a workshop setting, it’s about having the confidence to let go of…

Seneca says don’t be scruffy – trawling this blog for sales advice

Today I’m preparing for a session I’m giving at the University of Cambridge tomorrow on how to sell ideas. To help prepare, I’m going back through old posts…

Asking what if – change the frame for new ideas

Asking what if. It’s my go-to technique for stimulating rapid idea generation in groups. In this post, the latest in my series on creative thinking tools for projects,…

Use your Professional Palette

We move now in my series of posts on tools for creative thinking from gathering inputs to stimulating new connections. This is what I call ‘Turning the Kalideacope‘….

Preparing the colours for your Professional Palette

There are some inputs to our creative process that we build up over time so that we are ready to draw on them whenever we work on a…

Creative thinking tools for projects: the Eiffel Over guide

We need creative thinking tools in our project toolkit to get the most out the opportunities that a new project offers. Projects provide a setting in which people…

Filling the Kalideascope – inputs from colleagues

Together, the people around you know so much more than you do. In my last post for now on Filling the Kalideacope – gathering inputs for the creative…

Filling the Kalideascope – previous projects

Humans tend be to attracted to novelty – Oo, the shiny new thing – but sometimes what we need is in what we know already. This post is…

Filling the Kalideascope – go to site

This post is another in my series about inputs to the creative process, what I call ‘Filling the Kalideascope‘. Today’s input is visiting the site, and it cuts…

Brief explosion – starting a creative project

My starting point for gathering inputs to a creative project is the working brief. The technique that I use with participants in my workshops is what I call…

Filling the Kalideascope – creative inputs over time

Yesterday I wrote about the inputs you might gather at the start of a creative project. These are what I call inputs in the moment. But there is…

Filling the Kalideascope – creative inputs in the moment

In my last post I described the Kalideascope as a tool for having ideas. You fill it with inputs and then turn it to create new the connections…

Curating information for creativity

In this third video in my series on creative thinking, I go into the concept of curating inputs to the creative process. The combination of our brain and…

Build a Kalideascope for creative thinking

In my last post I cited James Webb Young’s definition of an idea as being a new arrangement of existing elements. He goes on to suggest having an…

What is an idea?

This week I have begun creating a series of videos to share my teaching on how to have ideas. The videos start with what simple question, what is…

Unreliable briefs – finding the deeper design narrative

It is tempting to think of a design brief as wholly reliable, a document that contains all the information necessary to execute the design. But design briefs are…

Superpowers for Creative Design

Superpowers for Creative Design is the name I gave to a one-page summary of my undergraduate creativity teaching at Imperial College. This is my first draft. I like…