Design thinking

Creativity expert Dr. Barry Kudrowitz, assistant professor at the University of Minnesota, opened a May 28 design-thinking workshop at Oregon State with, appropriately enough, a quote from OSU legend Linus Pauling: “The best way to a good idea is to have lots of ideas.”

Kudrowitz, a member of Minnesota’s College of Design, presented his interactive three-hour workshop in Austin Hall’s Robert Family Event Room to about 40 faculty and staff from throughout the OSU community.

Billed as a “hands-on introduction to a creative product design process,” the workshop randomly split participants into groups of five or six. Each group warmed up with a series of high-speed, word-association games designed to break the ice and limber up the gray matter, then brainstormed answers to the following question: “How might we incorporate play into the classroom and campus.”

The object of brainstorming, Kudrowitz explained, is “to generate lots of ideas quickly” with no time devoted to evaluating any of the ideas during this phase of the creative process. Brainstorming typically functions best, the professor said, with groups of five to nine people working for 20 to 40 minutes and using “brainstorm sketching”: Each person has an oversized pad of adhesive-backed paper for making drawings of their ideas – one idea per page, drawn “big and bold” with a Sharpie, then presented to the group with a few-second pitch and displayed on a wall.

Kudrowitz shared a quote from Albert Einstein: “If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.”

At the close of brainstorming, each group chose three ideas to be presented in the form of a “sketch model,” basically a crude prototype made from a pile of miscellaneous materials whose delivery Kudrowitz had commissioned – things like pipe cleaners, dish-cleaning sponges, plastic fruit, construction paper, glue guns, army men and Play-Doh.

Sketch modelers worked in two-person teams and presented their models to the all of those attending the workshop. Sketch-modeled examples of how to incorporate play into the classroom and campus included life-sized Legos in the MU Quad, a kinetic sculpture park where people could mingle and converse while moving art elements around, and campfire-style teaching with the lecturer at the center of a circular class area.

Kudrowitz was impressed. Usually, he said, after the presentation phase he reminds participants that this was simply an exercise for learning creative design tools – that is, not to be bothered by the seeming unworkability of the ideas – “but some of these could actually work; they could actually be implemented.”

For more information, visit Kudrowitz’s website, www.wonderbarry.com, follow him on Twitter, @kudrowitz, or email him at barryk@umn.edu.