GDD710 Development Practice Module - Week 2 - Research
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This weeks lecture covers "Creativity". A term that comes across as quite vague depending on the use and area. Many suggest that creativity is not one artefact, but a natrual selection of ideas that we generate or inspire from genuine and unusual thoughts. It is one of those attributes that individuals naturally have an understanding of. That does not mean they will know how to define it on the spot. It's easier to come up with a list of creatively historic people and creative events that took place, but there is no simplistic interpretation emcompassing the true concept of creativity. The best and first course of action is to start with a description and break it down.
"Creativity is the ability to transcend traditional ways of thinking or acting, and to develop new and original ideas, methods or objects." - (Kelly Morr, 2018)
The Ability - Allowing you to get up and go, making creativity a particular skill to individuals. Some may have the natural ability, where as others will struggle and gradually improve with time and determination.
Transcend Traditional Ways - Going above and beyond until the sky is the limit. Identifying what restrictions are already out there and harnessing the capability to refine things better and clearer.
Ideas, methods or Objects - Three areas using one word: Develop. Creativity surrounds imagination when it comes to developing. You research upon an idea to demonstrate it, new methods are to be tried and tested to show functionality potential and objects are to be constructed. Below is an illustration of creativity.
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Figure 1: Ilustration of Creativity (Rvasilovski, 2014)
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Creativity and Human Psychology
We were given a video on Creativity & Innovation by Professor Tanya Krzywinska who elaborates on creativity in a variation of techniques. One technique that really caught my interest was the Cognitive Psychology. This relates to creativity in how we as human beings, associate familiar paths through pattern recognition. It enables us to processs information and recognise how we see the world, searching for beneficial ways and experiences by Associative Learning.
This allows individuals to adapt in how patterns relate to eachother within the world, as well as their positive and negative impacts or behaviours (Yohan, 2015). Patterns aren't just about recognising, but catagorising. Taking in so much input to process, requires catagorising into classes that will be treated equally. This gives the ability to tackle each pattern and problem-solve what will occur next in a logical manner, whilst implementing redundancy to direct that information and recognising what is yet to happen, sparking the creativity to take over. Below is an illustration of pattern recognition.
Figure 2: Illustration of Pattern Recognition (Imagineer7, 2015)
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Piaget's Theory
Another technique on Creativity briefly mentioned was Piaget's Theory and Stages of Cognitive Development. Jean Piaget was a Swiss Psychologist whos beliefs in cognitive growth took place in stages. This was discovered through the study of children in their teenage years to determine how their logical ways of thinking develop. Piaget believed that human beings created their own comprehensions of the world. That learning is driven by the combination of two methods: Assimilation and Accodomodation. A child will first look back on their previous experiences to understand a new idea and adapt their expectations to include newer encounters.
Piaget's core focus was in how cognitive development altered over a growth period. Piaget's theory of cognitive development has suggested that each child must go through 4 distinct stages of intellectual development, that reflects increased sophistications of their thoughts (Saul McLeod, 2020). Every child goes through each stage in the exact same order. Their development is determined by biological maturation and how they handle interaction with the environment. During each stage, a childs thinking changes between due to a different criteria of intelligence. Below is an illustration of the stages of cognitive development.
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Figure 3: Stages of Cognitive Development Model (Vaishali Chaturvedi, 2017)
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4 Stages of Cognitive Development Breakdown
1. Sensorimotor Intelligence Stage - At Birth to 2 yrs old, the coordination of senses with motor responses, sensory curiosity about the world we live in. Langauge is used for demands and cataloguing. This is where object permanence is developed.
2. Preoperational Thinking Stage - At 2 -7 yrs old, symbolic thinking kicks in. Using a proper structure and grammar to express ideas. Imagination and intuition are strong, but complex and abstract thoughts are hard to understand. This is where Conversation is developed.
3. Concrete Thinking Stage - At 7 - 11 yrs old, Ideas become attached to concrete situations. The meaning of time, space and quantity are familiar and can be applied, only as dependent concepts due to no independence.
4. Formal Operational Thinking Stage - At Adolescence to Adulthood, theoretical, hypothetical and counterfactual thinking takes place. Abstract logic and reasoning also occur. Strategy and planning are achievable. Ideas that are learnt in one context, may be applied to another.
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Personal Thoughts on Piaget's Theory
I have to concure with Piaget's Theory. I feel that this is where the our inner-creativiness and instincts of innovation start to develop. The cognitive side relates alot to myself due to my own ways in interpreting information and generating ideas. Tanya Krzywinska's discussion on Piaget mentions how human perception tends to lead us down an approach full of assumptions, tending to disregard all that we think, or may think has significance towards a certain task or being personally directed towards us. An example of this this would be to look for a stone. The term "Stone" also being somewhat abstract, causes a lack of information to process. This questions if we are processing this similarly to others or completely different?
If it was me, I would have processed it to the point where I will not pickup a stone. perhaps something of a different material. These terms urge us to have a fixed mindset in what to look for, giving our cognitive thinking a "Search Engine", causing us to zone out anything that does not meet the given criteria of a stone. I believe that cognitive theory really makes a difference with its effective uses, to harness creativity at a young age due to the peak time of a childs mind to freeroam imagination. This is very beneficial in determining the lengths an individual can go to steer creativity to a higher potential. I aim to follow a similar process to enhance my personal creativity when generating new ideas and concepts to much greater effort and detail.
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ICEDIP Method
"Drawing is exercise for the restless imagination." - Tim Burton.
Figure 4: Tim Burton Image (livinglikejimmorrison1, 2015)
During Tanya Krzywinska's lecture on creaivity, she mentions another theory know as the ICEDIP Model designed by one of the UK's leading experts in teaching methods, Geoff Petty. Petty's method embraces a new way to creativity by recognizing it in 6 key phases. These phases are known as inspiration, clarification, distillation, perspiration, evaluation and incubation. When being creative, each of the phases must be encountered constantly. This does not mean they will be encountered in a specific order, but you may spend more time on some phases than others. This could be from a duration of seconds to hours. Petty states that each phase acts out with their own "Mindset" and has a belief in raising creativity levels, by applying an appropriate mindset inside a given timeframe. The use of ICEDIP recognises the significance and value of the creative process. Below is my own illustration of the iCEDIP Method.
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Figure 5: ICEDIP Method Model (Kyle Cornwell, 2021)
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ICEDIP Method Breakdown
1. Inspiration - The foundational phase filled with reasearch. letting some imagination run wild, allowing a build up of ideas to generate with your true creative self coming out. Not every idea you make will be used, but the key here is to allow a natural flow of thinking to take place. The rule book can be bent abit and have a few pages torn out, just leave some on standby.
2. Clarification - Having a clear core focus on what you want to achieve and how the ending result will turn out. The main objective here is to make an objective of the work itself. creative work can tend to make you lose yourself in tems of focus, hence why you frequently ask yourself "What do I want to achieve?" giving that sense of direction should any obstacles be faced during a project. Something to fall back on gives that clarification in where to go.
3. Evaluation - This is where you evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your work and consider how they can be improved upon. Removing any weaknesses will allow further improvements, as well as the exploitment of strengths. This will cause a high possibility to revisit the Perspiration phase due to the positive responses needed for improvements. Some consider Evaluation to be quite satisfying, especially to highly creative thinkers as tinkering is one of their motivators.
4. Distilliation - The best ideas are chosen to either be developed upon or mixed into improved ideas. This becomes a self-critique lesson requiring some analysis and judgement. Bearing in mind these ideas are not finalised yet. Being harsh can enhance your innovative skills. The journey of an idea rather than the idea itself is where the profit is. It is all about taking a creative leap of faith and being prepared to take on challenges that may lie ahead.
5. Incuubation - Where you leave the work alone, still thinking about it in the background as you distract your mind. Alot of ideas generate during common things such as doing the washing up or walking home. Those that have the ability to postpone work on a project and tend to other priorities, will with no doubt be thinking about it constantly in how to combat some problems that may have occured. Distancing yourself from ideas will enable you to evaluate them better. Sometimes putting an idea aside, benefits your imagination to take the reins and improve what could become a masterpiece.
6. Perspiration - This is where the practical work takes place. You're own involvement is measured through your efforts and determination to complete your set goal. Futher cycles of inspiration, distillation and clarification a highly likely to take place.
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Adapting ICEDIP to my own Creativity
I consider myself to lean towards a designers mindset when generating ideas. I tend to struggle on idea if a given criteria or theme has not been specified. I can see alot of potential using this method to process my creative thinking alot more. I aim to use ICEDIP in the latter of this module, as well as throughout the course to display how far my creativiness and innovation skills have progressed. I shall do this by comparing my project ideas to my own capabilities, size of project itself and timeframe to develop such an idea. This will enable me to work more hands-on and professionally. I will demonstrate this in futher blogs relating to development of upcoming projects.
Figure 6: Tackling ICEDIP Method Model (Kyle Cornwell, 2021)
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Fostering Creativity
Harnessing creativity can be a tricky situation. especially when starting from scratch. luckily, there are a range of techniques to overcome this and inspire new ideas. Below is a list of techniques to assist in creativie thinking.
1. Brainstorming - Known as an ideation method. Brainstorming is a tool of loose and informal approaches to ideation. You must be open-minded when using this method as all ideas are useful, so ensure you reserve judgment on yourself and others. It starts with a clearly defined theme, followed by every participant involved to throw ideas that come to mind down onto paper. Each idea will spark another and will start to develop relatiionships between one another. Setting a pre-conditional deadline can reduce the size of ideas and prevent any overthinking. This works more from a teamwork perspective, provided everyones opinons are valid. Other examples of this such as step ladder, brainwriting and star-bursting are most common to this technique.
2. Mindamaps - A graphical representation employed to organise information from a visual position. Mindmapping involves a main theme at the centre, followed by new and innovative ideas to branch out and exploit that main idea. These connections can range from text, images and tables to incorporate a much wider dsplay of ideas to make a proposal for the upcoming project. This is classed as a similar technique to brainstorming, only that there is a structured approach to be encouraged.
3. Round Robin - A group brainstorming exercise. The coordinator will start off by defining the problem. Once the problem has been defined to a great measure, each team member must generate ideas related to that problem on paper. These ideas are passed around each team member and the cycle begins to problem solve the randomly given idea. This method can be used as many times until a final idea has been agreed upon.
4. Opposite Thinking - The playful problem-solving technique, allowing you to challenge any assumptions you might have and look at artefacts from alternate perspectives. You start by making a list of assumptions related to your situation, and then define an opposite reality out of it. This can take up to as many times you deem neccessary. The idea is to constantly use the new reality assumptions that persist into the next iteration.
5. Collage/Cut-Up - The advocate behind this technique was David Bowie. Enhancing a process to make idea generating faster such as randomisation and reading between information. Collage/Cut-Up benefits a less rigid syntax and feels more crafty. Highly recommended to have users for your criteria involved to class it as a "co-creative activity", allowing a better grasp in how they think and what they value from input.
6. Mash-up - Mash-up technique introduces a mixture of objects together in unusual ways. The best approach to start this process is with "How might we...". Construct two recognised catagories, such as gyms and bowling alleys. Generate as many elements releated as possible from these selected catagories under two minutes. Once the timer has reached zero, calculate the number of elements and try to combine them with eachother. Drawing the technique to a close with asking "Does this combination have the ability for innovation?".
7. Crazy Eights - An individual as well as collective technique, known to include time constraints. A total of eight minutes and can be repeated in a variation of methods to reduce the overlap and narrowing of ideas. Each team member must fold a sheet of paper in half three times, making eight sections. The theme is defined at the start. All team members are encouraged to propose a minimum of one idea during each minute. Once eight minutes are up,
8. SCAMPER - Not just a technique, but an acronym for Substitude, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to other uses, Eliminate and Rearrange. SCAMPER has the ability to apply to almost anything when it comes to creating ideas, as well as variation generating towards a theme or existing solutions. Each the acronyms are used to raise questions during ideation. Questions such as "What can we adapt?" or "How can this be substituted?".
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References:
Kelly Morr, 2018. What is creativity? The ultimate guide to understanding today’s most important ability. [Online] Available at: https://99designs.co.uk/blog/creative-thinking/what-is-creativity/ [Last Accessed 02/07/2021]
Yohan, 2015. Perception is a creative act: On the connection between creativity and pattern recognition. [Online] Available at: https://neurologism.com/2015/09/27/does-the-human-brain-work-solely-by-pattern-recognition/ [Last Accessed 02/07/2021]
Tanya Krzywinska, 2000. Week 2: What is Creativity? [Online] Available at: https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/912/pages/week-2-what-is-creativity?module_item_id=54079 [Last Accessed 02/07/2021]
Falmouth University, 2021. Professor Tanya Krzywinska. [Online] Available at: https://www.falmouth.ac.uk/staff/professor-tanya-krzywinska [Last Accessed 02/07/2021]
Jeremie Jozefowiez, 2012. Associative Learning. [Online] Available at: https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-1-4419-1428-6_703 [Last Accessed 02/07/2021]
Saul McLeod, 2020. Piaget's Theory and Stages of Cognitive Development. [Online] Available at: https://www.simplypsychology.org/piaget.html [Last Accessed 02/07/2021]
Tim Burton, 1958. 37 Quotes About Drawing to Inspire You. [Online] Availlable at: https://adventureswithart.com/37-quotes-about-drawing/ [Last Accessed 02/07/2021]
Teaching Expertise, 2021. ssessing Creative Development: The ICEDIP Model. [Online] Available at: https://www.teachingexpertise.com/articles/assessing-creative-development-the-icedip-model/ [Last Accessed 02/07/2021]
Geoff Petty, 2021. Creativity. [Online] Available at: https://geoffpetty.com/creativity/ [Last Accessed 02/07/2021]
Falmouth University, 2021. Week 2: How to Foster for Creativity. [Online] Available at: https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/912/pages/week-2-how-to-foster-for-creativity?module_item_id=54080 [Last Accessed 02/07/2021]
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