Category: CreativityPage 3 of 3

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…

Building creative culture in engineering companies

I am starting to shift my attention away from creative tools for engineers. Tools are still important. But I’ve realised that you need a creative culture for individual…

Notes from IStructE Academics’ Conference 2018

There was great energy at today’s IStructE Academics’ Conference, the theme of which was Creativity and Conceptual Design. If you are visiting this site for the first time,…

Secretly teaching design – notes from our curriculum planning day at Imperial

I am just back from taking part in a Design Thread workshop at Imperial College, the aim of which was to co-ordinate activity between the various design-relevant courses…

Aristotle, Seneca and Emotional Intelligence – conceptual design training notes

This post is intended as a reminder for the people participants in last week’s conceptual design workshop. It may also pique the interest of anyone else interested in…

How to have ideas – guidance for engineers and other humans

When I’m asked, you know, at a cocktail party or some other social setting, ‘what exactly do you do’ I say ‘I train engineers to be more creative’….

Working notes: building a questionnaire to characterise design

Today at Think Up I am writing a set of questions that can be used as a diagnostic tool to characterise different stages in the design process. The…

#11 Show notes – Jack Bardwell – Spine-tingling creativity

Graphic designer Jack Bardwell and I used to be colleagues at the Useful Simple Trust, he bringing alive the many wacky ideas I have had about how to…

#10 Show notes- John-Paul Flintoff – Saving the world one creative project at a time

Journalist and author John-Paul Flintoff is this person who inspired me to start this podcast. He talks passionately about how to get people started on their creative projects…

Trust me, I feel your pain, I have a plan – tools for selling design

The final stage in the arc of design thinking workshops that I have been developing at Think Up with my colleague Nick Zienau is developing the ability to…

#7: Musician and composer Ellie Westgarth-Flynn on creative strategies, instruments as an extension of our bodies and creative feedback

Ever since I was a kid my Dad has been sharing musical composition strategies with me, so I think music has been a lens thorugh which I’ve thought…

Eiffelovercast #5 – Nick Cobbing: photographing the Arctic

Photographer and photojournalist Nick Cobbing talks about photographing the Arctic, what happens to photographic equipment at minus 38 degrees, using drones to take photos, the role of the…

Everyday Creativity for Blues Dancers

This is the second workshop I have run in the ‘Everyday Creativity for…’ series, this time for blues dancers in the London blues scene. A huge thank you…

Use these 5 apps to create distraction-free time.

We need distraction-free time to make progress on our creative projects. At the same time, we rely on online networks and information to nourish our ideas. The trouble…

The Happy Grid: prioritise your action list in a more fulfilling way

The Happy Grid is a technique I devised a few months ago to help me use short and long-term happiness as a guide for daily decision making. Since…

Podcast Episode 1 – Engineering, creativity and practical philosophy

http://traffic.libsyn.com/eiffelover/Eiffelover_Podcast_No1_7thAug16_EMF_Camp.mp3 I’ve been thinking about creating an Eiffelover podcast for over a year. Last week at Port Eliot festival I saw John-Paul Flintoff (@jpflintoff) give a great talk…

9 Ways to Build Creativity in your Organisation

Creativity doesn’t happen on its own, it happens in a social context. So if we want to build creativity in organisations, we need to focus not only on…

Does going for a walk improve design?

I have just read an interesting piece on the Stanford university website, ‘Stanford study finds walking improves creativity’ (article found via this news piece on the Hazel Hill…

Designers: turn off your phone – harness the wandering mind

I recently read Daniel Goleman’s excellent book Focus, and I have been thinking about how our ability to focus affects our ability to design. This thinking was the…

What makes a good conceptual design statement? – working notes

Today I am working on course material related to defining what is a good conceptual design. I think, in construction at least, it is quite difficult to identify…

Workshop inspiration from Jackson Pollock

Today I went on a recce to the Tate Liverpool for a course we are designing at Think Up for a client. As I left the event hosting…

Notes on ‘Teaching Design in the first years of a traditional mechanical engineering degree: methods, issues and future perspectives’

From the latest edition of the European Journal of Engineering Education (Vol 40 (1)) I have just read the very interesting paper ‘Teaching Design  in the first years…