11. November 2024 By Milena Fluck and Daniel van der Wal
Creativity techniques
In the blog post on the topic ‘Creativity: Cognition and GenAI ’, we took a superficial look at generative artificial agents and how they work, and compared them to generative natural intelligence. Generative means having the power or function to create, produce, generate, or reproduce something. GenAI is capable of this. If it is also original and useful, it meets the requirements for creativity according to our original definition. Generative artificial agents not only generate ideas, as we have seen in the Alternative Uses Task. They also generate complete products: images, videos, texts, sounds, tone sequences, etc.
But it is also a fact that an artificial agent never had to do the dishes to come up with the idea of developing a machine that would save generations a lot of time, stress and perhaps even separation because of washing dirty dishes. An agent cannot build such a machine independently by attracting the necessary experts and investors. An agent will not use the machine themselves, talk about it with different people, encounter problems during the implementation process, iteratively improve the solution, design and evaluate it on multiple levels and based on different criteria. All of this is part of the creative process to create a fully fledged creative product.
Humans are indispensable in the creative process
A generative agent begins to be creative when we give it a prompt – a specific problem definition with a task.
Most of the steps and abilities associated with creativity remain with us humans. However, generative AI can help us to generate ideas, think outside the box and achieve faster, more efficiently and further. A generative artificial agent can be our creative assistant in idea generation. On the market, we can already find generative models and products that are specialised for different industries, input formats, output formats and workflows. The IT industry, and in particular code development and generation, seems to be one of the main target groups in the generative AI market. We recommend that everyone use this to their advantage.
Which idea we spend time, energy and financial resources on is left to us as individuals and as a society. Discovery, invention, design and innovation remain the driving forces of our society and economy. It therefore makes sense to promote the use of generative artificial intelligence. It goes without saying that ethical, copyright and data protection risks must be addressed. This will not be discussed further here.
Creativity techniques as a driver of idea generation
In our project work as UX/UI designers, consultants, developers or architects, we can use creativity techniques to motivate ourselves to find more answers to a question. Creativity techniques are methods that aim to promote creativity and generate ideas in a targeted way in order to develop visions or solve problems. There are techniques for the following steps in the creativity process
- Understanding the problem
- Generating ideas
- Presenting ideas
- Selecting ideas
- Implementing ideas
Mind mapping
A mind map is a visual representation of thoughts on a particular topic. Main categories and subcategories are formed and connected by lines. This is how topics are structured and clearly presented. Contexts become more visible. This helps to understand, organise and solve complex topics and problems. The technique is used to plan projects or the implementation of functions, to organise and document thoughts. It also helps to make decisions and optimise existing processes.
Role playing
Role playing is a creativity technique in which participants slip into the role of another person or organisation in order to gain new perspectives and approaches to solutions. The aim is to put oneself in another person's shoes in order to look at challenges and problems from a different perspective. The technique can be carried out in a group or by an individual.
Brainstorming – generating ideas
In this creativity technique, a group of people is asked to spontaneously generate ideas for a task. It doesn't matter how outlandish an idea seems. The ideas are simply called out into the room and communicated directly to all other group members.
Brainwriting
In contrast to brainstorming, ideas are not thrown around openly. This method is therefore often recommended for teams with introverted members. Each participant writes their ideas individually on a piece of paper and these are then collected anonymously.
Storyboarding
Storyboards are frequently used by influencers, filmmakers and UX designers. A storyboard is the graphical version of a script, a web application or a video campaign. To create a storyboard, you take the time to write down or sketch out the steps that customers will go through or experience when using the product. This makes it clear whether a solution is truly viable and whether there are any logical inconsistencies.
This is just a small selection. There are many more creativity techniques, such as reverse brainstorming, synectics, random input or the Walt Disney method. Without creativity, we would have no Wi-Fi, no fibre optics, no cloud and no containerisation.
‘The most dangerous phrase in the language is, ‘We've always done it this way’.’
Grace Hopper
In addition to the use of generative artificial intelligence and creativity techniques, we can foster creativity by
- recognising the crucial importance of questions,
- seeing mistakes as learning opportunities,
- promoting freedom of expression, trust and respect, and
- providing sufficient resources, skills and effective communication systems.
Conclusion
To foster creativity in an organisation, an open communication flow, the opportunity for self-initiated and risk-taking behaviour, the participatory security of all participants and respect for diversity are required. Creativity can often only be judged by experts. Just as we cannot understand the hype surrounding certain works of art, most people unfamiliar with the development will react to sections of code that, from our point of view, solve a particularly complex problem. Whether something is creative is often subjective and can only be judged by experts in a field. All creativity should be respected, even if the product or process is only original, new and useful for a specific group. Each of us has creative potential.
‘Treasure your curiosity and nurture your imagination. Have confidence in yourself. Do not let others put limits on you. Dare to imagine the unimaginable.’
Dr Shirley Ann Jackson
Would you like to learn more about exciting topics from the adesso world? Then take a look at our previously published blog posts.
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