Week 07 - Origination

Class Format

The class today was concerned with chapter 6 'Context' of 'The laws of simplicity'. We also talked about Edward de Bono's 'Six Thinking Hats'.

 

Group Exercise

Reading Quiz

1. What does the word ENTROPY mean and why is this relevant?
   - deterioration, degeneration, crumbling, decline, degradation, decomposition, breaking down, collapse; disorder, chaos. For Maeda entropy represents the spaces between something. Nothing is the counter balance of something and humans have an innate urge to make something out of nothing.
2. If you are attuned to everything around you, does it help you deal with what is in front of you and why or why not ?
   - This depends on the ambience of the given everything. A space be conducive or not to forming focus. Following Maeda's logic an open simple space invites the urge to fill it and importantly he also says "Being attuned to what surrounds us in the ambient environment can sometimes help us manage what’s immediately in front of us" (from The Laws of Simplicity).
3. How is this different from FOCUS ?
   - Focus tunes out the surrounding environment.
4. Being “comfortably lost” is a balance between what 2 feelings?
   - For Maeda lost equals complexity (bad) and found equals simplicity (good).
5. Describe a recent scenario when you found yourself to be “comfortably lost”. Did you enjoy the sensation?
   - Recently playing with Blender I found myself comfortably lost in tutorials. A knew what I wanted to achieve and that it was possible. While at the same time as feeling daunted by the complexity of the program in front of me, I felt reassured by a clear path to my goal.
6. If you couldn’t hold back the urge to write on the “don’t write on this page” page – what would you write?
   - I would white out the sentence "don't write on this page".

 

Thinking Game – Lateral Thinking

Edward de Bono’s “6 Thinking Hats”. In your blog write 6 labelled paragraphs on your group’s progress to date, using each of the 6 hats as a perspective.
"The White Hat calls for information known or needed. The Red Hat signifies feelings, hunches and intuition. The Black Hat is judgment -- the devil's advocate or why something may not work. The Yellow Hat symbolizes brightness and optimism. The Green Hat focuses on creativity: the possibilities, alternatives and new ideas. The Blue Hat is used to manage the thinking process." (paraphrased from this site).

• Which HAT best represents your group?
  - I would say that we all use a variety of hats.
• Why?
  - Because we are intelligently engaged with the project.
• Describe an Exhibition Group meeting where you may adopt the BLACK hat.
  - A recent sms interaction with my colleagues saw me adopt a black hat where I felt that a particular idea proposed did not sufficiently fulfil its requirements.

 

Research

Video

I was surprised when I saw what Edward looked like, I honestly thought he was a completely different guy. I had him confused with Alain de Bottom, must be the French 'de' prefix.

 

Images

Found this image here.

 

Reflection

The ability to approach a problem from multiple directions is an essential characteristic for a designer. This week again demonstrated ways in which to consciously force this process to occur. A bit of thinking game trickery can shift the context entirely.