The Dog Exercising Machine
afterglow (571 pencils) | Sun, 2005-04-24 17:03
As designers we're called upon to regularly create new and fresh ideas. However how our brains have been conditioned to think can guide us down some well trodden paths in our quest for something original.
As part of an experiment in how people think, Edward De Bono, a specialist in lateral thought, undertook an experiment with a group of four to 14 year olds. They were simply asked to design a dog exercising machine. The object of this experiment was to show how children with no firm preconceptions can come up with ideas that went outside the normal boundaries.
• One child's park had a catapult that hurled magnetized dog biscuits, which dogs chased as the biscuits automatically flew back.
• A girl put her pet on springs that jiggled its feet.
• A device that pulled dogs along was propelled by an ingenious power plant: the energy was created by the dog's barking into a speaking tube.
• One machine threatened punishment, using a hammer to whack a dog on the back if it refused to exercise.
This process of thinking without boundaries or impediments becomes more limited with peoples growth and experience of the world. As De Bono puts it
The Brain is fundamentally uncreative. It is an environment in which dominant paths or patterns form, where established ideas tend to establish themselves further, where alternative pathways are naturally suppressed.
The Dog Exercising Machine is a great starting point for those interested in evolving their thought processes..
Some more interesting reading on the quirks of the mind.
Edward De Bono : Serious Creativity
Malcolm Gladwell: Blink
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Weeee robotic bunnies run and taken over the world ! Bad dogie, I know lets geneticly alter dogies, Wee already do that with chickenies :D
I was looking for such a read. I'm ordering it now!
It would be interesting to see how can we fight this natural suppression of alternative pathways. Can one train himself to consciously not follow the pattern?
Training oneself not to follow a set pattern is almost impossible, as you still follow a pattern no matter which direction you follow. The trick is to constantly make a mental effort to look at things from a new perspective. Ask a partner, ask a child, walk outside, take a trip across town. You've got to first get out of your set environment in order to stimulate the intake of new information that has no set interpretational pattern. Only then can true creativity be sparked... (But then again, is anything truly original?)
I know. My creative director often says when judging my creative:
- Nah! It's been done before...
- And I go, of course. Everything has been done before.
I think in commercial communication you don't need to be original, just do the right thing, even if it has been done before.
On the other hand, William Bernbach said:
"In advertising, not to be different is virtual suicide."
If we take this as a rule then we should always look for original ideas, but I'm quite sure that it's virtually impossible to come up with anything truly original. It's only a matter of time till you find it out that somebody somewhere has already done the same idea or concept and even that was not original. We're always building on each others work. The point is that it shouldn't be straight plagiarism. And especially it shouldn't be obvious for your audince that this idea has been done before.
Paul Gaugain said: "Art is either plagiarism or revolution."
I don't think any client can expect us to do a revolution every time we do a job. It's nice if one can manage to do a small uprising once in a year and maybe the lucky ones can even do a revoulution once in a life time.
The point is we should train ourselves to think differently and strive for creative excellence.
You made some good points, and spun me off on another idea: perhaps the goal should not be to come up with an original concept, but originality should be sought in the method of which a concept is applied.
For example, an advertising idea may have already been presented to a certain market, but another group of people (or medium, or technique, or time period, etc) may not have been exposed to said idea. Originality comes through in how we take the source of our inspiration and then apply it in a completely new and radical way.
The brain's major purpose is to take care of the thousands of little unconscious deciscions we make during the day. Consider the fact there are over 39,916,800 different combinations to dressing yourself in the morning with an average of 11 items of clothing. But for 99% of the world, the way you did it this morning is the exact way you did it when you were 7.
When we are asked to create a new metaphor for a certain idea, we have to fight against our brain's natural tendency to present the most common. I saw a post on the forum a number of months ago about the film "What the Bleep do we know?" I saw it recently and it covers the brain's natural ability to rewire it's neural pathways based on concious effort, among other ideas. Highly recommended viewing as well.
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"One machine threatened punishment, using a hammer to whack a dog on the back if it refused to exercise."
I'm pretty sure that's been done before, somewhere in the dirty souf.