Teaching Designing: generating ideas

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Teaching Designing generating ideas

• teaching students how to make
• a creative response

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What are we talking about? Generating ideas is
an everyday human activity, happening everywhere
and anywhere It is about making a creative
response to a particular task, context or set of
circumstances It involves finding solutions to
problems, challenges or needs
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What are we not talking about? Generating ideas
does not take place only in the presence of a
piece of A3 paper a border a pencil It does not
always involve a brainstorm It does not always
result in 6 ideas before going back to the
original one It is more than a stage in a
process
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Generating ideas Unzipping the mind Buzzing with
ideas Using your imagination Critical
thinking What could be? What might be? What
if?
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Ive had a thought We could How
about Lets try Whats needed is
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Learning from the professionals

• Innovators - Seymour Powell
• Make design their business
• Great role models
• They generate ideas by
• talking
• asking questions (enquiry)
• making observations of the world
• studying peoples needs in context
• role playing from different perspectives
• playing devils advocate
• user/consumer testing
• analysing markets
• shopping
• consulting specialists
• pooling expertise
• sketching and jotting (thinking onto paper)

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Now theres an idea!
If this is the reality, then these are the skills
and approaches to generating ideas that students
should be taught They should be able to develop
and use these skills in their own right, as well
as within the design process They need plenty
of the tricks of
the trade up their sleeve