Creative Thinking Techniques

Discontinuity principle - is the disruption of thought patterns to stimulate thinking.

- Roger Van Oech calls it a "whack on the side of the head"

- Edward De Bono calls it a PO or "Provocative Operation"

- Try programming interruptions into your day e.g. change working hours, get to work in a different way, listen to a different radio station, read some magazines you wouldn't read normally, try different recipe, watch a TV program or film you wouldn't watch normally.

NB: Provocative ideas are stepping stones that get us thinking about other ideas.

Osborn's check list - is a comprehensive list of questions about ideas and problems that can be used individually or in groups.

- designed to support creative and divergent thinking

- Also known as SCAMPER - Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify/Magnify/Minify, Put to other uses, Eliminate, Reverse/Rearrange.

Brainstorming-is group discussion to produce ideas or solve problems

Rules of brainstorming

- Focus on quantityl

- No criticism

- Encourage wild ideas

- combine and improve ideas 

Attribute listing - involves breaking the problem into smaller parts and looking at alternative solutions to these parts.

For example, if you were brainstorming ideas for a new type of car, you might list attributes like “fast,” “fuel-efficient,” “luxurious,” or “affordable.” Once you have a good list of attributes, you can start to think about how those attributes could be combined to create new and innovative ideas.

Imitation -copy other ideas as a preparatory tool for coming up with other ideas

Mind mapping- way of linking key concepts using images, lines and links. A central concept is linked via lines to other concepts which in turn are linked with other associated ideas.

Six thinking hats

A way of investigating an issue from a variety of perspectives, but in a clear, conflict-free way. It can be used by individuals or groups to move outside habitual ways of thinking, try out different approaches, and then think constructively about how to move forward.

Lateral thinking

6-3-5 Brainwriting- The 6-3-5 Brainwriting ideation technique helps a team come up with a large number of ideas in a short timeframe by drawing inspiration from previously mentioned ones. The technique considers a team of 6 people writing 3 ideas in 5 minutes each round, resulting in 108 ideas after 6 rounds or 30 minutes.

Story boarding- a creativity technique that often uses stick diagrams to explain a scenario, so that the planning for that scenario can be done. 

Just like brainstorming, this is also mainly employed by groups. It requires a moderator and takes place in a group of 8-12 people. The moderator will first arrange the ideas obtained from the brainstorming session in a logical order on a white board.

A story will be created around it with the maximum interconnection of ideas and different pieces. The pictorial representation helps keep all factors in front of your eyes which helps in interconnecting different factors while searching for solutions. Every phase has a Critical Section in which participants discuss their story board.

The story boarding process includes four phases −

1.Planning − This phase begins with the issues clearly spelt out and defined by the moderator. He then takes a piece of paper and gets ready to take down notes of the participants.

2.Ideas − In this phase, the ideas are put on and different plans for people are arranged as per the sequence of the new ideas.

3.Organization − During this phase, the participants decide who among them is going to implement the finalized solutions and the timing of the plan to implement.

4.Communication − In this phase, the participants are asked to share their storyboard with all the members in the organization. Through this process, they can use match-stick figures, balloon sketches and flowcharts to give a visual graphics to their idea.

Morphological analysis- is the process of examining possible resolutions to unquantifiable, complex problems involving many factors.

Mnemonics -are strategies used to improve memory. They are often taught in school to help students learn and recall information.

Examples of mnemonics include:

Setting the ABCs to music to memorize the alphabet

Using rhymes to remember rules of spelling like "i before e except after c"

Forming sentences out of the first letter of words in order (acrostics), such as "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally," to remember the order of operations in algebra

Nine mnemonic strategies

Keyword Mnemonics-e.g. in order to learn the Spanish word for grass, which is pasto, first think of the word pasta (the keyword I've chosen) and then imagine pasta noodles growing up out of the grass. When you are asked what the Spanish word for grass is, that should trigger the image of pasta growing up out of the grass and then help you recall the word pasto.

Chunking-grouping information is a mnemonic strategy that works by organizing information into more easily learned groups, phrases, words, or numbers. Phone numbers, Social Security, and credit cards are organized using chunking.For example, memorizing the following number: 47895328463 will likely take a fair amount of effort. However, if it is chunked like this: 4789 532 8463, it becomes easier to remember.

Musical Mnemonics-One way to successfully encode the information into your brain is to use music. A well-known example is the "A-B-C" song, but there's no end to what you can learn when it's set to music. You can learn the names of the countries of Africa, science cycles, memory verses, math equations, and more.

Letter and word

Acronyms and acrostics are typically the most familiar type of mnemonic strategies.

Acronyms use a simple formula of a letter to represent each word or phrase that needs to be remembered.

For example, think of the NBA, which stands for the National Basketball Association.

Or, if you're trying to memorize four different types of dementia, you might use this acronym: FLAV, which would represent frontotemporal, Lewy body, Alzheimer's, and vascular. Notice that I ordered the list in such a way to more easily form a "word," which you would not do if the list you need to memorize is ordered.

An acrostic uses the same concept as the acronym except that instead of forming a new "word," it generates a sentence that helps you remember the information.

An often-used acrostic in math class is: Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally. This acrostic mnemonic represents the order of operations in algebra and stands for parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction

Rhymes

Making connections

Method of loci-The method of loci (pronounced low-sigh) is arguably the earliest identified mnemonic in history. It is first attributed to Simonides of Ceos, a Greek poet, in 477 BC. It's also one of the most researched mnemonics, demonstrating strong success across a wide spectrum of academic subjects and life situations.

How does it work? The learner visualizes a room or a familiar path through a building.

The learner mentally associates facts or information with specific locations or objects along the way.

In order to recall what they learned, they re-visualize moving through that room or along that path, and each stop along the way triggers another piece of information.

This method is also called the journey method, creating a "memory palace" or the mental walk strategy.

Research ranging from medical students learning about diabetes to college students remembering grocery lists shows significant improvements when the method of loci is used.

Peg method

The Mnemonic linking system (stories or images)

Experiment

Creative problem solving

Affinity diagram

Mood board

Visualization

Word association

Five Ws- 5W's is an acronym that stands for Who, What, Where, When, Why; some authors add a sixth question, how, to the list. The 5 W's is an analysis method, composed of several stages that question the fundamental characteristics of a situation.

Round Robin brainstorming

Reverse or negative brainstorming -a creative problem solving technique that involves asking negative or opposite questions to generate new ideas

Incubation

Reframing

Illumination

Metaphorical thinking-direct comparison between two unrelated things 

Example: Time is money or Wasting time is like throwing money down the drain, and spending time on something is making an investment for the future. This way, Metaphorical Thinking opens people's eyes to the similarities between disparate things. Another example is comparing a badly-run organisation to a sinking ship 

Synectics- Developed by Gordon & Prince, synectics means the joining together of seemingly unrelated elements. 

According to Gordon, Synectics research has three main assumptions:

The creative process can be described and taught;

Invention processes in arts and sciences are analogous and are driven by the same "psychic" processes;

Individual and group creativity are analogous. Example, in a study of form and function in biology, students are shown pictures of different types of vehicles, such as SUV’s, sports cars, sedans, etc. and pictures of animals with particular structural adaptations. In this case, pictures are used to trigger analogies between dissimilar 

2. Cats eyes in the road.

3. Spitfires.g5

4. Clarence Birdseye took a vacation in Canada and saw some salmon that had been naturally frozen in ice and then thawed. When they were cooked he noticed how fresh they tasted. He borrowed the idea and the mighty

frozen food industry was born.

5. They could have suggested the principle of independent suspension.

6. The burrowing movement of earthworms has suggested a new method of mining, which is now in commercial

production.

7. In Edinburgh Botanic Gardens there is a plaque commemorating a flower that inspired the design of the Crystal Palace.

8. Sir Basil Spence, the architect of Coventry Cathedral, was flipping through the pages of a natural history magazine

when he came across an enlargement of the eye of a fly, and that gave him the general lines for the vault.

9. Linear motors.

10. Ball-and-socket joints.

11. Magnifying glasses.

12. The arch. Possibly the Eskimos were the first to use the

arch in the construction of igloos.

13. Hollow steel cylinders.

14. Levers.

15. Bagpipes.

16. Wind instruments.

Remember;

 that what the natural model suggests is usually a principle that nature has evolved or employed to solve a particular problem or necessity in a given situation. That

principle can be extracted like venom from a snake and applied to solve a human problem. 

Radar, for example, came

from studying the uses of reflected sound waves from bats.

The way a clam shell opens suggested the design for aircraft cargo doors. 

The built-in system weakness of the pea pod suggested a way of opening cigarette packages, a method now widely used in the packaging industry.

The same fundamental principle – that models for the solution to our problems probably already exist, we do not have

to create them from nothing – can be applied to all creative thinking, not just to inventing new products. Take human

organization for example. Most of the principles involved can be found in nature: hierarchy (baboons), division of labour (ants, bees), networks (spiders’ webs), and so on. If you are trying to create a new organization you will find plenty of ready-made models in human society, past or present.

Remember, however, that these are only analogies. If you copy directly you are heading for trouble.