BMG 110

DESIGN PRINCIPLES

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Design Principles
BMG110
UNIT 1 : THE PRINCIPLES OF
UNIVERSAL DESIGN
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Today at the end of 20th century, the world is completely different from what it was a
hundred years ago. People live longer now and survive better. However functionality
compromised consumers, due to either age or disability, are increasing in number. They
constitute significant part of population and are potential consumers of design. Another major
segment of this population includes children, baby boomers, teenagers, adults, disabled
people and individual inconvenienced by circumstances. As all consumers deserve equal
recognition and respect, facilities, devices, services and program must be designed to serve
the needs of diverse clientele. The demographic, legislative, economic and social changes
sweeping the world demand designs that can cater to everyone in the society.

Universal design is one such concept that provides a blueprint for maximum inclusion
of people. It strives to be a board - spectrum solution that produces buildings, products and
environments not only for disabled people but that are also usable and effective for everyone.
Designing a product or environment involves consideration of factors such as aesthetics,
engineering options, industry standards, cost, environmental issues and safety concerns.
These factors enables the designer to design a product or importance of the look of the
product as well, thus, Making it a part of our daily life.

In this unit, you will learn the seven basic principles of design. The design of all
product, services, interface and environments that involve designing are based on these seven
basic designing principles. However, Universal Design is a new paradigm which enables the
designer to create a design that appeals to a wide range of customers. The explanation of
these principles also includes certain guidelines. by using these guidelines in your design, you
can ensure that your design needs maximum users.

1.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES

After going through this unit, you will be able to :

• Explain the importance of Universal Design

• Define Universal Design
• List the seven principles of Universal Design
• Define guidelines for principles of Universal Design
1.2 UNIVERSAL DESIGN
Universal design (often inclusive design) refers to broad-spectrum ideas meant to produce
buildings, products and environments that are inherently accessible to older people, people
without disabilities, and people with disabilities.

The term "universal design" was coined by the architect Ronald L. Mace to describe the
concept of designing all products and the built environment to be aesthetic and usable to the
greatest extent possible by everyone, regardless of their age, ability, or status in life.
However, it was the work of Selwyn Goldsmith, author of Designing for the Disabled (1963),
who really pioneered the concept of free access for disabled people. His most significant
achievement was the creation of the dropped curb - now a standard feature of the built
environment.

Universal design emerged from slightly earlier barrier-free concepts, the broader accessibility
movement, and adaptive and assistive technology and also seeks to blend aesthetics into these
core considerations. As life expectancy rises and modern medicine increases the survival rate
of those with significant injuries, illnesses, and birth defects, there is a growing interest in
universal design. There are many industries in which universal design is having strong market
penetration but there are many others in which it has not yet been adopted to any great extent.
Universal design is also being applied to the design of technology, instruction, services, and
other products and environments.

Curb cuts or sidewalk ramps, essential for people in wheelchairs but also used by all, are a
common example. Color-contrast dishware with steep sides that assists those with visual or
dexterity problems are another. There are also cabinets with pull-out shelves, kitchen
counters at several heights to accommodate different tasks and postures, and, amidst many of
the world's public transit systems, low-floor buses that "kneel" (bring their front end to
ground level to eliminate gap) and/or are equipped with ramps rather than on-board lifts.

1.3 PRINCIPLES OF UNIVERSAL

DESIGN
These seven principles are not without their critics. Some consider them vague and difficult
to understand. Others argue that they are more applicable to product and graphic design than
building design. And yet, as evidenced by their growing international acknowledgement,
these principles continue to maintain their status as the definitive statement of what
constitutes universal design. This guidebook also acknowledges the seven Principles of
Universal Design by explaining and illustrating their applicability to the universal design of
the built environment.
On the following pages, each of the seven principles is explained and associated with a
simple pictogram. When guidelines are listed in subsequent sections of this guidebook, the
principles most relevant to each guideline are acknowledged through use of these pictograms.
Both the front and back covers of this guidebook include a flip out page listing the seven
principles and their associated pictograms that can be kept open for quick reference while
reviewing the guidelines.

• Equitable use
• Flexibility in use
• Simple and intuitive
• Perceptible information
• Tolerance for error
• Low physical effort
• Size and space for approach and use

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

1. Define Universal Design.

2. Give an example of equitable use principle.
3. Why is universal design sometimes regarded as a synonyms for accessibility
standards?

1.3.1 Equitable Use

The design is useful and marketable to people with diverse abilities.

GUIDELINES

• Provide the same means of use for all users: identical whenever possible; equivalent
when not.
• Avoid segregating or stigmatizing any users.
• Provisions for privacy, security, and safety should be equally available to all users.
• Make the design appealing to all users.
1.3.2 Flexibility in use

The design accommodates a wide range of individual preferences and abilities.

GUIDELINES

• Provide choice in methods of use.

• Accommodate right- or left-handed access and use.
• Facilitate the user's accuracy and precision.
• Provide adaptability to the user's pace.

1.3.3 Simple and Intuitive

Use of the design is easy to understand, regardless of the user's experience, knowledge,
language skills, or current concentration level.

GUIDELINES

• Eliminate unnecessary complexity.

• Be consistent with user expectations and intuition.
• Accommodate a wide range of literacy and language skills.
• Arrange information consistent with its importance.
• Provide effective prompting and feedback during and after task completion.
1.3.4 Perceptible Information

The design communicates necessary information effectively to the user, regardless of ambient
conditions or the user's sensory abilities.

GUIDELINES

• Use different modes (pictorial, verbal, tactile) for redundant presentation of essential
information.
• Provide adequate contrast between essential information and its surroundings.
• Maximize "legibility" of essential information.
• Differentiate elements in ways that can be described (i.e., make it easy to give
instructions or directions).
• Provide compatibility with a variety of techniques or devices used by people with
sensory limitations.

1.3.5 Tolerance for Error

The design minimizes hazards and the adverse consequences of accidental or unintended
actions.

GUIDELINES
 • Arrange elements to minimize hazards and errors: most used elements, most
accessible; hazardous elements eliminated, isolated, or shielded.
• Provide warnings of hazards and errors.
• Provide fail safe features.
• Discourage unconscious action in tasks that require vigilance.

1.3.6 Low Physical Effort

The design can be used efficiently and comfortably and with a minimum of fatigue.

GUIDELINES

• Allow user to maintain a neutral body position.

• Use reasonable operating forces.
• Minimize repetitive actions.
• Minimize sustained physical effort.

1.3.7 Size and Space for Approach and Use

Appropriate size and space is provided for approach, reach, manipulation, and use regardless
of user's body size, posture, or mobility.
GUIDELINES

• Provide a clear line of sight to important elements for any seated or standing user.
• Make reach to all components comfortable for any seated or standing user.
• Accommodate variations in hand and grip size.
• Provide adequate space for the use of assistive devices or personal assistance.

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

1. Which principle of Universal Design helps in facilitating the user's accuracy and
precision?
2. State the principle of perceptible information
3. What does simple and intuitive use of the design indicates?
4. Which principle of Universal Design accommodates in hand and grip size?
5. What does Low Physical Efforts signify ?

1.4 SUMMARY
• Universal design is a human-centred framework for designing while keeping everyone
in mind.
• Universal design provides the structure for the design information, communication,
places, things, and policy to be usable by widest range of people operating in widest
range of situations.
• Universal design accommodates the needs of users with disabilities without
manipulating the design.
• The characteristics of Universal Design can be explained using the principles of
Universal Design.
 • It has seven principles namely Equitable Use, Flexibility in Use, Simple and Intuitive
Use, Perceptible Information, Tolerances for Error, Low Physical Effort, Size and
Space for Approach and Use.
• Each principle has its own set its own set of guidelines for designers to implement
that particular principle in the design.
• The guidelines are commonly used around the world, with slight modifications or one
or two principles grouped together, wherever required.

1.5 KEY TERMS

• Accessibility: Any entity which is easy to approach, reach, enter, speak with, or use.
• Aesthetics: The study of the mind and emotions in relation to sense of beauty.
• Blueprint: A detailed outline or plan of action.
• Demographic: A single vital or social statistics of human population stating the
number of births or deaths.
• Holistic: Incorporating the concept of holism in theory or practice. holism is the
theory that states that whole entities, as fundamental components of reality, have an
existence other as the mere sum of their parts.
• Legibility: The state or quality of being visible and readable.
• Legislative: A system or progress of or pertaining to the enactment of laws.
• Paradigm: A philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or
discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the experiments
performed in support of them are formulated. Broadly, it can be defines as theoretical
framework of any kind.

1.6 QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

Short- Answer Questions

1. List the seven principles of Universal Design.

2. Give three Examples from daily life to explain the importance of Universal Design.
3. State the objective of the principles of Universal Design
4. Which principles enables a designer to create a design that is useful and marketable to
people with diverse abilities?
5. Why it is important to consider size and space of a product while designing it ?
6. For what type of products should a designer use the principles of Universal Design ?
Long Answer Questions

1. Describe the difference between meeting the accessibility standards and Universal
Design.
2. Explain the role of Universal Design in today's world.
3. How can a designer ensures that a design requires low physical effort?
4. How can you ensure that the hazards and adverse consequences of accidental actions
while using a product are minimized?
UNIT 2 : PRINCIPLES OF
GOOD GUI DESIGN
2.0 INTRODUCTION
In computer science, a graphical user interface (GUI /ɡuːiː/), is a type of user interface that
allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and visual indicators
such as secondary notation, instead of text-based user interfaces, typed command labels or
text navigation. GUIs were introduced in reaction to the perceived steep learning curve of
command-line interfaces (CLIs), which require commands to be typed on a computer
keyboard.

The actions in a GUI are usually performed through direct manipulation of the graphical
elements. Beyond computers, GUIs are used in many handheld mobile devices such as MP3
players, portable media players, gaming devices, smartphones and smaller household, office
and industrial equipment. The term GUI tends not to be applied to other lower-display
resolution types of interfaces, such as video games (where head-up display (HUD) is
preferred), or not restricted to flat screens, like volumetric displays because the term is
restricted to the scope of two-dimensional display screens able to describe generic
information, in the tradition of the computer science research at the Xerox Palo Alto
Research Center (PARC).

Designing the visual composition and temporal behaviour of a GUI is an important part of
software application programming in the area of human–computer interaction. Its goal is to
enhance the efficiency and ease of use for the underlying logical design of a stored program,
a design discipline named usability. Methods of user-centered design are used to ensure that
the visual language introduced in the design is well-tailored to the tasks.

2.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES

After going through this unit you will be able to:

• Identify the need of good GUI design

• Explain features of successful GUI design
• Understand the role of the users in designing a GUI design
• Implement design principles in a GUI design
• Apply standards in GUI applications
2.2 GIVE USERS CONTROL
Humans are most comfortable when they feel in control of themselves and their environment.
Thoughtless software takes away that comfort by forcing people into unplanned interactions,
confusing pathways, and surprising outcomes. Keep users in control by regularly surfacing
system status, by describing causation (if you do this that will happen) and by giving insight
into what to expect at every turn.

GUI designers' predilection for control is evident in applications that continually attempt to
control user navigation by greying and blackening menu items or controls within an
application. Controlling the user is completely contradictory to event-driven design in which
the user rather than the software dictates what events will occur. As a developer, if you are
spending a lot of time dynamically greying and blackening controls, you need to re-examine
your design approach and realize that you may be controlling the user, who may not want to
be controlled. As business changes at a faster pace, flexibility in user interfaces will become a
key enabler for change. Allowing the user to access the application in ways you never
dreamed can be scary, but satisfying for you as a developer and empowering for the user.

2.3 GUI SUCCESS

Successful GUIs share many common characteristics. Most importantly, good GUIs are more
intuitive than their character-based counterparts. One way to achieve this is to use real-world
metaphors whenever possible. For example, an application in recently examined used
bitmaps of Visa and MasterCard logos on buttons that identified how a customer was going
to pay. This graphical representation was immediately intuitive to users and helped them
learn the application faster.

Another important characteristic of good GUIs is speed, or more specifically, responsiveness.

Many speed issues are handled via the design of the GUI, not the hardware. Depending on the
type of application, speed can be the make-or-break factor in determining an application's
acceptability in the user community. For example, if your application is oriented toward
online transaction processing (OLTP), slow performance will quickly result in users wanting
to abandon the system. You can give a GUI the appearance of speed in several ways. Avoid
repainting the screen unless it is absolutely necessary. Another method is to have all field
validations occur on a whole-screen basis instead of on a field-by-field basis. Also,
depending upon the skills of the user, it may be possible to design features into a GUI that
give the power user the capability to enter each field of each data record rapidly. Such
features include mnemonics, accelerator keys, and toolbar buttons with meaningful icons, all
of which would allow the speed user to control the GUI and rate of data entry.
For an interface to be easily useable and navigable, the controls and information must be laid
out in an intuitive and consistent fashion. Your users are probably well acquainted with many
other interfaces, and you should be too if you want to achieve a level of familiarity for your
users. Coming out with an entirely new layout for your interface might sound like a highly
rewarding, paradigm-breaking project, but for all practical purposes, if you want users to feel
at home then follow the path of your predecessors! Logic of usability should play a big part
in the design process: features that are the most frequently used should be the most prominent
in the UI and controls should be consistent so that users know how to repeat their actions.

2.4 UNDERSTAND PEOPLE

Many designers unwittingly fall into the perspective trap when it comes to icon design or the
overall behaviour of the application. I recently saw an icon designed to signify "Rolled Up"
totals for an accounting system. To signify this function, the designer put much artistic effort
into creating an icon resembling a cinnamon roll. Unfortunately, the users of the system had
no idea what metaphor the icon was supposed to represent even though it was perfectly
intuitive from the designer's perspective. A reserved-icons table containing standard approved
icons, such as the one shown in Figure 1, will help eliminate these problems.

Meaning and Use to Identify an Used to Identify a Reserved Word

Picture
Behaviour Application Function Text Label
Yes
Information
No (identifies Information None
Message
message box)
Yes
Warning Message No (identifies Warning None
message box)
Yes
Question Message No (identifies question None
message box)
Yes
Error Message No (identifies error None
message box)

Applications must reflect the perspectives and behaviours of their users. To understand users
fully, developers must first understand people because we all share common characteristics.
People learn more easily by recognition than by recall. Always attempt to provide a list of
data values to select from rather than have the users key in values from memory. The average
person can recall about 2,000 to 3,000 words, yet can recognize more than 50,000 words.
2.5 DESIGN FOR CLARITY
GUI applications often are not clear to end users. One effective way to increase the clarity of
applications is to develop and use a list of reserved words. A common complaint among users
is that certain terms are not clear or consistent. I often see developers engaging in spirited
debates over the appropriate term for a button or menu item, only to see this same debate
occurring in an adjacent building with a different set of developers. When the application is
released, one screen may say "Item," while the next screen says "Product," and a third says
"Merchandise" when all three terms denote the same thing. This lack of consistency
ultimately leads to confusion and frustration for users.

Appears Appears
Mnemonic Shortcut
Text Meaning And Behavior On On
Keystrokes Keystrokes
Button Menu
Accept data entered or acknowledge
<Return> or
OK information presented and remove Yes No None
<Enter>
the window
Do not accept data entered and
Cancel Yes No None Esc
remove the window
Close the current task and continue
Close working with the application; close Yes Yes Alt+C None
view of data
Exit Quit the application No Yes Alt+X Alt+F4
Help Invoke the application's Help facility Yes Yes Alt+H Fl
Save data entered and stay in current
Save Yes Yes Alt+S Shift+Fl2
window
Save
Save the data with a new name No Yes Alt+A F12
As
Undo Undo the latest action No Yes Alt+U Ctrl+Z
Cut Cut the highlighted characters No Yes Alt+T Ctrl+X
Copy Copy highlighted text No Yes Alt+C Ctrl+C
Paste the copied or cut text at the
Paste No Yes Alt+P Ctrl+V
insertion point

If a user is not able to understand his or her way around your interface, all the time you spent
perfecting the software’s functionality is rendered useless. Both in terms of visual hierarchy
and content, there should be absolutely no ambiguity over the way your interface operates.
One of the difficulties in striving towards having a clear UI is knowing when to elaborate and
when to be concise. As a general rule of thumb, the quicker and easier something can be
explained without losing any of the semantic meaning or factual information, the better!
While a UI should be designed so that users can easily run tasks without the help of a manual,
it doesn’t hurt to implement some clearly labelled help documentation just in case
Give good direction on your website or application. Buttons should have clear direction,
labels on the navigation should be informative, and, most importantly, e-commerce should
assure the user that their order is being placed securely and accurately..

2.6 DESIGN FOR CONSISTENCY

Good GUIs apply consistent behaviour throughout the application and build upon a user's
prior knowledge of other successful applications. When writing software for business
applications, provide the user with as many consistent behaviours as possible. For example,
both the Embassy Suites and Courtyard Marriot hotel chains are growing rapidly due to their
popularity among business travellers who know they will be provided with a familiar room
and a consistent set of amenities. The bottom line is that business travellers are not looking
for a new and exciting experience at each new city. Business users of your software have
similar needs. Each new and exciting experience you provide in the software can become an
anxiety-inducing experience or an expensive call to your help desk.

The user should expect the same results if they perform the same behaviour. For example, if
they roll over an image and details about the image pop up next to it, it should happen that
way for all images in that section and all sections that look similar. If you aren’t offering that
feature on images in other sections of the site, they should have a different look and feel.
Buttons should be in a consistent place and look similar; the same font should be used for all
section headers and the same font for all body text. The colours scheme must be consistent,
too.

This does not have to be a super-stringently detailed document like many large corporations
have. You merely have to define places where you want consistency and make sure the client
knows what they are. When they come to you with a request that is outside of the standards
(and totally destroys your beautiful design), you can politely refer them to the document.

2.7 WATCH THE PRESENTATION

MODEL
A critical aspect that ties all these facets of the interface together is the interface’s look and
feel. The look and feel must be consistent. On the basis of users’ experiences with one screen
or one dialog box, they should have some sense of how to interact with the next screen or
control.

Searching the interface model for good design and continuity is very important. The model
should involve careful decisions, such as whether the application has a single or multiple
document interface. The model also will validate how users perform the main tasks within the
application.
Identifying the appropriate presentation for the application greatly facilitates the subsequent
windows being developed since they will have a common framework in which to reside. On
the other hand, if you do not define the presentation model early in the design of your GUI,
late changes to the look and feel of the application will be much more costly and time-
consuming because nearly every window may be affected.

The essence of a Presentation Model is of a fully self-contained class that represents all the
data and behaviour of the UI window, but without any of the controls used to render that UI
on the screen. A view then simply projects the state of the presentation model onto the glass.

To do this the Presentation Model will have data fields for all the dynamic information of the
view. This won't just include the contents of controls, but also things like whether or not they
are enabled. In general the Presentation Model does not need to hold all of this control state
(which would be lot) but any state that may change during the interaction of the user. So if a
field is always enabled, there won't be extra data for its state in the Presentation Model.

2.8 CONTROL DESIGN

Controls are the visual elements that let the user interact with the application. GUI designers
are faced with an unending array of controls from which to choose. Each new control brings
with it expected behaviours and characteristics. Choosing the appropriate control for each
user task results in higher productivity, lower error rates, and higher overall user satisfaction.
Use the table in Figure 4 as a guideline for control usage in your screens.

Control Number of Choices in the Domain Shown Type of Control

Menu bar Maximum of 10 items Static action
Pull-down menu Maximum of 12 items Static action
Cascading menu Maximum of 5 items, 1 cascade deep Static action
Pop-up menu Maximum of 10 items Static action
1 for each button, maximum of 6 per dialog
Push button Static action
box
Check box 1 for each box, maximum of 10 to 12 per Static set/select value
 group
1 for each button, maximum of 6 per group
Radio button Static set/select value
box
Maximum of 50 in the list, display 8 to 10
List box Dynamic set/select value
rows
Drop-down list Display 1 selection in the control at a time, up Dynamic set/select single
box to 20 in a drop-down box value
Combination Display 1 selection in the control at a time in Dynamic set/select single
list box standard format, up to 20 in a drop-down box value; add a value to the list
Spin button Maximum of 10 values Static set/select value
Static set/select value in
Slider Dependent on the data displayed
range

Finally, try to keep the basic behaviour and placement of these controls consistent throughout
your application. As soon as you change the behaviour of these basic controls, your user will
feel lost. Make changes thoughtfully and apply the changes consistently.

2.9 APPLYING DESIGN PRINCIPLES

Understanding the principles behind good GUI design and applying them to your applications
can be a challenge. Let’s examine an application to see how these principles can result in an
improved interface.

Part 1: Exploring a GUI in Need of Redesign

The interface in Figure 5 is used by an ambulance-dispatching company to maintain customer
data, provide billing information, and dispatch ambulances. The application was a port from a
character-based system and contains several design errors that affect the user’s performance
with this mission-critical application. Keep in mind that GUI ease of use and clarity is
especially important in a critical application such as this where the rapid handling of a request
can make the difference between life and death. Here is what is wrong with this screen:

• Too many functions at the top level.

The users requested that the new application provide all of the information at their fingertips.
This results in the screen being used for both customer maintenance and ambulance
dispatching. If you enter extensive customer information and then press the Update button,
the record is updated. However, if you enter minimal customer information, such as social
security number, diagnosis, from-location, and to-location, and then press the Trans button,
an ambulance will be dispatched. Updating and dispatching functions need to be in separate
dialog boxes.

• Poor navigational assistance.

GUI controls should be positioned according to frequency of use. The most important field
should be in the upper left; the least important field should be in the lower right. It’s hard to
imagine how the company and invoice number could be the most important fields when
dispatching an ambulance.

• Inappropriate use of controls.

The designer chose to use text labels rather than group boxes to identify which groups of data
would be placed in the boxes. This many group boxes with text labels in these positions
makes the screen appear convoluted and makes it difficult to distinguish the data from the
labels. Also, the editable fields should be identified with a box around them, so that it is
intuitively obvious which fields can be changed.

• Lack of symmetry.
Just lining up fields, group boxes, and buttons will make this GUI much easier to use. Our
brains like order, not chaos.

• Too many buttons.

The buttons along the right should be on the application’s parent window, possibly in a
toolbar, but not on this child window.

Part 2: Looking at an Improved Interface

Figure 6
Figure 7

• Order out of chaos.

This application should contain several child windows for the different tasks that a user might
perform. These tasks can be accessed easily through the Tasks menu or by pushing a button
on the vertical toolbar. The Dispatch button invokes a modal dialog box instead of a modeless
child window. That way, you can require the user to acknowledge the completion of the
dispatching task. If it were a modeless window, the user might overlay it without ever
dispatching the ambulance.

• Reordering input fields.

The confusing order of fields has been more logically structured based on importance and
frequency of use.

• Improved controls.

The revised interface features a consistent use of data-entry fields. Any field in which a user
can enter data is surrounded by a border. Group boxes are used to group related fields
together or to illustrate a domain.

These changes, suggested by the principles that we have previously discussed, make for a
clean and more intuitive interface.
2.10 IMPLEMENTING EFFECTIVE
STANDARDS
Once you implement some good design practices into your GUI applications, how do you
ensure others in your organization will do the same? The most cost-effective way to ensure
consistency among your GUI applications is to implement GUI standards that are easy to use,
clear, and concise. We’ve all experienced the “standards” manual that is energetically
distributed to co-workers only to be placed immediately on the developer’s shelf next to other
unread manuals. To ensure that your standards do not meet this same fate, provide them in an
online hypertext format. Divide your standards into rules which must be followed or the
developer will have some explaining to do and recommendations. Developers like to know
what is mandatory and where they have discretion.

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

1. What does control design refer to principles of design?

2. What could be the possible measurements to remove the lack of symmetry from a
screen of an application?

2.11 SUMMARY
• Good GUI designs do not happen naturally. It involves the proper understanding and
application of the various design principles.
• The design must design the GUI in such a manner that the user is able to navigate
through the interface easily using the controls. the user must be given the maximum
control of the interface.
• Spontaneity and intuitiveness are the two main features of a good GUI ,which must be
incorporated in the design.
• the use of real word metaphors, mnemonics, accelerator keys, and tool bars with
meaningful icons helps in adding these features in the design.
• Apart from designing an intuitive GUI, it is equally important for the designer to
understand the perspective and behaviour of the users.
• Irrespective of the type of users for whom the GUI is designed, clarity and
consistency in the design are of high importance. A designer can make use of a list of
reserved words to bring clarity in the design. And to avoid shocks and surprises for
the user, it is essential to maintain consistency across the application.
• When you have incorporated the basic features of a good GUI in your design, the next
step is to check for the presentation of the application and the arrangement of control
 in it..The correct choice of control helps to control the productivity, error user rates
and user satisfaction.
• After the design is complete and implemented comes the responsibility of stating the
standards and ensuring that they are adhered across the organization.
• Therefore principles of design start with the understanding of the user's perspective
and complete with implementation of standards across the organization. Hence, the
principles of design when followed correctly ensure the success of the GUI.

2.12 KEY TERMS

• Child window: A secondary on a screen that is displayed within the parent
window of the application.
• Interface: The user interface allow the user to communicate with thw
operating system. It includes the Keyboard, mouse, menus of a computer
system.
• Mnemonics: A programming code or acronym that is easy to remember, such
as STO for 'store'.
• Model Window: In user interface design, a modal window is a child window.
It requires the users to interact with it before they can returen to the parent
application. this helps in preventing the workflow on the main window of the
application .
• Parent window: The main window of an application where all the controls
and buttons for basic functions are placed.
• Hypertext: Hypertext is text that links to other information. By clicking on a
link in a hypertext document, a user can quick jump to different content.
Though hypertext is usually associated with web pages.

2.13 QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

Short-Answer Questions
1. Why is control design important in a GUI design?
2. What accounts for non-clarity in an application?
3. What is a presentation model?
4. List some of the features of that can account for a bad GUI design.
5. List five basic principles of a good GUI design.
6.
Long-Answer Questions
1. Why is it important for a designer to understand the behaviour and
perspective of the users?
2. Why is it important for a designer to understand the behaviour and
perspective of the user?
3. Why is it important to follow the principle of consistency in a GUI
design?
4. Why is it important to implement standards in GUI design?
UNIT 3: COMPOSITION AND DESIGN
3.0 INTRODUCTION
Composition is the manner pieces or components are combined and arranged visually to tell a
story. Proper composition considers alignment, grouping, placement, space, and visual flow
within a layout. This layout can be any medium. Once a proper audience and purpose have
been determined then composition, components, and concept can encompass that identified
purpose allowing a successful design.

In the visual arts—in particular painting, graphic design, photography, and sculpture—
composition is the placement or arrangement of visual elements or ingredients in a work of
art, as distinct from the subject of a work. It can also be thought of as the organization of the
elements of art according to the principles of art.

The term composition means 'putting together,' and can apply to any work of art, from music
to writing to photography, that is arranged or put together using conscious thought. In the
visual arts, composition is often used interchangeably with various terms such as design,
form, visual ordering, or formal structure, depending on the context. In graphic design for
press and desktop publishing composition is commonly referred to as page layout.

3.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES

After going through this unit, you will be able to:

• Identify the basic visual or art elements of design

• Understand certain design principles
• Explain the various visual effects
• Understand the principles of art and composition
• Implement the principles of art and composition in a design

3.2 VISUAL ELEMENTS

A work of art can be analysed by considering a variety of aspects of it individually. These
aspects are often called the elements of art. A commonly used list of the main elements
include form, shape, line, color, value, space and texture. The various visual elements, known
as elements of design, formal elements, or elements of art, are the vocabulary with which the
visual artist composes. These elements in the overall design usually relate to each other and
to the whole art work.
The elements of design are:

1. Line
2. Shape
3. Colour
4. Texture
5. Value or Tone
6. Volume or Form
7. Space
8. Pattern
9. Rhythm
10. Proportion

Line

Line is probably the most fundamental of all the elements of design. It is the starting place for
most artistic creation whether one is starting painting or even sketching ideas for a sculpture.
most design begins with line line consist of only one dimension, length. In the real world of
creating art though a one dimensional line would not be practical. A more usable definition
might be that line is the path of a dot, point etc. through space and that is always has more
length than thickness. Lines are not all the same, especially in art.

Types of Lines
• Vertical lines: are straight up and down and perpendicular to horizontal lines
• Horizontal lines: are straight up and down and perpendicular to vertical lines
• Diagonal lines: are lines that straight in any direction except vertical or horizontal
• Zigzag lines: are a series of diagonal lines joined end to end
• Curved lines: are lines that bend in any amount of degree; they may be gently wavy to
tightly wound spirals

Lines come in many varieties. They may:

• be long, short or anything in between

• be thick, thin
• be smooth or rough
• be continuous, implied, dotted, dashed
• change direction
• change in degree of curve (curved Lines)
• be any of the above combined
 • to outline; a starting place for many drawings or paintings
• to suggest moods or emotion; lines can appear calm, nervous, angry, etc.
• to lead the viewers eye through a work of art
• to create lightness or darkness; lines placed close together appear darker than those
placed further from each other
• to create texture; roughness or smoothness

Shape

Shape is a two dimensional area confined by a actual line or implied line (an edge for
example). In drawing shapes are created when the ends of lines are joined to enclose areas.
There are two general categories that are use to describe shapes. Geometric and Free-Form or
Organic Shapes. Shapes are created when lines are combined to form a square, triangle, or
circle. Shapes can be organic (irregular shapes found in nature) or geometric (shapes with
strong lines and angles such as circles, triangles, and squares).

• Can be described using mathematical terms

• They are very regular or precise
• They are more often found in man-made things because they are easier to reproduce
and make things with
• Examples of geometric shapes are: squares, rectangles, triangles, circles, oval,
pentagons and so on.

The visual element of Shape can be natural or man-made, regular or irregular, flat (2-
dimensional) or solid (3-dimensional), representational or abstract, geometric or organic,
transparent or opaque, positive or negative, decorative or symbolic, colored, patterned or
textured.
Colour

Color is characterized by attributes such as hue, brightness, and saturation. Color symbolism
assigns additional associations, dependent on culture. For example, white has long suggested
purity, but it can also take slightly different meanings such as peace, or innocence. However,
in some places (for instance, Japan and China) it signifies death.

Colour originates from a light source, that is either view directly or as reflected light.
Daylight or white light contains light waves for all colours. There is no colour without light!
The absence of light is complete darkness or black. The mixture of all visible light is white
light. White light is made up of all the colours in the rainbow. Water droplets in the air act
like a prism does when light passes through. It organizes random colour light waves into the
order of their wave length. We see that organized pattern as a rainbow. These colours are
always in the same order and are called the Colour Spectrum. When organized in order
around a circle; the colour spectrum is called a Colour Wheel.

Texture

Meaning the way a surface feels or is perceived to feel. Texture can be added to attract or
repel interest to an element, depending on the pleasantness of the texture.

Types of texture
 • Tactile texture is the actual three-dimension feel of a surface that can be touched.
Painter can use impasto to build peaks and create texture
Tactile texture, are the actual variations upon a surface. This can include, but is not
limited to, fur, wood grain, sand, smooth surface of canvas or metal, glass, and
leather. It differentiates itself from visual texture by having a physical quality that can
be felt by touch. Specific use of a texture can affect the smoothness that an artwork
conveys. For instance, use of rough surfaces can be visually active, whilst smooth
surfaces can be visually restful. The use of both can give a sense of personality to a
design, or utilized to create emphasis, rhythm, contrast, etc

• Visual texture is the illusion of the surfaces peaks and valleys, like the tree pictured.
Any texture shown in a photo is a visual texture, meaning the paper is smooth no
matter how rough the image perceives it to be.
Visual texture is the illusion of having physical texture. Every material and every
support surface has its own visual texture and needs to be taken into consideration
before creating a composition. As such, materials such as canvas and watercolour
paper are considerably rougher than, for example, photo-quality computer paper and
may not be best suited to creating a flat, smooth texture. Photography, drawings and
paintings use visual texture both to portray their own subject matter realistically and
with interpretation. Texture in these media is generally created by the repetition of the
shape and line.

The tree's visual texture is represented here in this image.

Value or tone

Value (or tone) refers to the various degrees of light and shadow. Values allow us to perceive
the three-dimensionality of objects because valuez correspond to planes of form.For example,
if we look at each plane of the hexagonal volume to the right, each has a value different from
the other. Theoretically, the values are all different because each plane has a distinct and
unique relationship to the light conditions. When our volume becomes a sphere, we see that
the planes of the hexagon meld into a smoothed-out surface of an infinite number of
indistinguishable planes. Theoretically again, the sphere should then display an infinite
number of values. The more values we describe, the more descriptive we can be of forms as a
whole. Note that the darkest dark in the drawing of the sphere occurs in the cast shadow.
Also note that the lightest light is the white of the page. Once we establish the two extremes
of light and dark, we can pull out a full range of values between them.

Form

Form is the three-dimensionality of an object. Shape is only two-dimensional; form is three-

dimensional. You can hold a form, walk around a form, and in some cases walk inside a
form. Value can imply form in drawings or paintings. Shading a circle in a certain manner
can give it the illusion of a sphere.

This group of sculptures by Magdalena Akanowicz have actual volume; they are three-
dimensional. Because the figures are open they allow a glimpse of what the inside of a
sculpture looks like, (including welded together sections of separate castings). This openness
gives a sense of volume. If they were closed, they would appear to have density, or mass.
Space

Space in a two-dimensional drawing or painting refers to the arrangement of objects on the

picture plane. The picture plane is the surface of your drawing paper or canvas. You can have
a picture plane that is a crowded space with lots of objects or an empty space with very few
objects. A two-dimensional piece of art has height and width but no depth. The illusion of
depth can be achieved by using perspective. Perspective is the technique that is used to create
the illusion of depth in your picture. Perspective makes your picture look like it is moving to
the distance like in a landscape or cityscape.

Categories of Space

• Positive space – Similar to a positive shape, it is the actual sculpture or building.

• Negative space – Similar to a negative shape, it is the space around the sculpture or
building.
• Picture Plane is the flat surface of your drawing paper or canvas.
• Composition is the organization and placement of the elements on your picture plane.
• Focal Point is the object or area you want the viewer to look at first.

Negative space surrounds a sculpture or object. A person can walk around sculptures and
objects, look above them, and enter them. Space refers to the space inside, around, and above
a sculpture or object. A three-dimensional object with positive space will have height, width,
and depth.

Pattern

Pattern is an underlying structure that organizes surfaces or structures in a consistent, regular

manner. Pattern can be described as a repeating unit of shape or form, but it can also be
thought of as the "skeleton" that organizes the parts of a composition.
Pattern exists in nature as well as in designed objects; it is useful to look at the parallels. A
Harvard biologist named Peter S. Stevens has published a book entitled "Patterns in Nature"
in which he claims that there are only a finite number of ways that patterns can be structured.
He starts with the idea of a grid as the foundation for any structure or image. He presents a set
of ways in which the points of a grid can be connected. These modes of connection become
classes of pattern, which he claims can be seen in any situation, in nature and in made
images, and from the microscopic to the cosmic scale.

The modes he describes include the following which are described here in terms of examples
from nature. However, each of these modes can also be seen in examples of designed objects
and works of art:

• Flow
• Branching
• Spiral
• Packing and Cracking

Flow: All things flow, following paths of least resistance. Flow can be seen in water, stone,
the growth of trees. Meander patterning is related to the idea of flow, and is built on the
repetition of an undulating line. In this detail from a textile hanging made up of knotted
threads, the meandering color lines resulting from the technique quite naturally create this
type of pattern.

Branching: Branching is an obvious form of patterning in the plant world, but it can also be
seen in geological formations such as river deltas and certain crystalline formations.
Spiral: Spiral patterns can be seen from the scale of galaxies to the opening "fiddlehead"
buds of ferns, to the forms of microscopic animals.

Packing and Cracking: Packing and Cracking refers to the way in which compacted cells
define each others shape. A densely packed cluster of mushrooms will grow together,
deforming the circular form of each cap because of crowding. In the same way a cluster of
soap bubbles deforms each bubble from the perfect sphere of the isolated bubble, according
to rules that govern the surface tension of soap bubbles. Surfaces (like mud or old paint) that
shrink may experience cracking, resulting in similarly cellular patterning.

Rhythm

Rhythm can be described as timed movement through space; an easy, connected path along
which the eye follows a regular arrangement of motifs. The presence of rhythm creates
predictability and order in a composition. Visual rhythm may be best understood by relating
it to rhythm in sound. This link will take you to a video clip and explanation of how the
sound of a Nigerian "talking drum" follows the intonation and rhythm of speech. Rhythm
depends largely upon the elements of pattern and movement to achieve its effects. The
parallels between rhythm in sound/ music are very exact to the idea of rhythm in a visual
composition. The difference is that the timed "beat" is sensed by the eyes rather than the ears.
Visual rhythm can be created in a number of ways. Linear rhythm refers to the characteristic
flow of the individual line. Accomplished artists have a recognizable manner of putting down
the lines of their drawings that is a direct result of the characteristic gesture used to make
those lines, which, if observed, can be seen to have a rhythm of its own. Linear rhythm is not
as dependent on pattern, but is more dependent on timed movement of the viewer's eye.
Repetition involves the use of patterning to achieve timed movement and a visual "beat".
This repetition may be a clear repetition of elements in a composition, or it may be a more
subtle kind of repetition that can be observed in the underlying structure of the image.
Proportion

Proportion refers to the relative size and scale of the various elements in a design. The issue
is the relationship between objects, or parts, of a whole. This means that it is necessary to
discuss proportion in terms of the context or standard used to determine proportions. Our
most universal standard of measurement is the human body; that is, our experience of living
in our own bodies. We judge the appropriateness of size of objects by that measure. For
example, a sofa in the form of a hand is startling because of the distortion of expected
proportion, and becomes the center of attention in the room. Architectural spaces intended to
impress are usually scaled to a size that dwarfs the human viewer. This is a device often used
in public spaces, such as churches or centers of government. The same principle is often
applied to corporate spaces through which the enterprise wishes to impress customers with its
power and invincibility. In contrast, the proportions of a private home are usually more in
scale with human measure, and as a result it appears more friendly, comfortable, less
intimidating.

Use of appropriate scale in surface design is also important. For example, an overly large
textile design can overwhelm the form of a garment or a piece of furniture.
3.3 SOME DESIGN PRINCIPLES
The Principles are concepts used to organize or arrange the structural elements of design.
Again, the way in which these principles are applied affects the expressive content, or the
message of the work.

The principles are:

• Emphasis
• Harmony
• Scale
• Opposition
• Unity

Emphasis

Emphasis is also referred to as point of focus, or interruption. It marks the locations in a

composition which most strongly draw the viewers attention. Usually there is a primary, or
main, point of emphasis, with perhaps secondary emphases in other parts of the composition.
The emphasis is usually an interruption in the fundamental pattern or movement of the
viewers eye through the composition, or a break in the rhythm.

The artist or designer uses emphasis to call attention to something, or to vary the composition
in order to hold the viewers interest by providing visual "surprises."

Emphasis by Contrast: In realistic art the focal point is usually quite easy to spot. Larger
figures, usually found in the foreground, provide a focal point. Even in non-realistic art, it is
usually easy to spot the focal point. If most of the figures are horizontal, a vertical element
will stand out as a focal point.

If the rest of the elements are irregular, a geometric shape will stand out. If most of the
elements are dark, a splash of light color will catch the eye.
Emphasis by Isolation: If most of the elements in a work of art are grouped closely together,
an object by itself stands out as a focal point.

Emphasis by Placement: An object placed in the centre will often be perceived as a focal
point. If all eyes in the painting look at one object, or if an object is placed at the centre of the
lines of perspective, that object will be perceived as the focus of the work.

Objects on the top will dominate objects on the bottom of a frame.

Harmony

The pleasing agreement of parts or combination of parts in a composition Harmony involves

the selection/design of elements that share a common trait, however, Harmony becomes
monotony without Variety. Common traits orientation colours or values shape/size materials
variety: the extent of the differences in design elements visual interest is enhanced by
introducing dissimilar elements and spatial arrangements. brings together a composition with
similar units. If your composition was using wavy lines and organic shapes you would stay
with those types of lines and not put in just one geometric shape. (Notice how similar
Harmony is to Unity - some sources list both terms) Harmony can be described as sameness,
the belonging of one thing with another. The repetition of design elements like colour,
texture, shape, and form is one of the easiest ways to achieve harmony to create a
composition.

Harmony pulls the pieces of a visual image together.

Unity

Unity is a measure of how the elements of a page seem to fit together - to belong together. A
unified work of art represents first a whole, then the sum of its parts.

Proximity: The simplest method of making objects appear to belong together is to group
them closely together. This allows us to see a pattern.

Repetition/Pattern: Another method often used to promote unity is the use of repetition.
Repetition of colour, shape, texture or object can be used to tie a work together.

Continuation: A much more subtle method of unifying a work involves the continuation of
line, edge or direction from one area to another. Continuation is often used in books and
magazines to tie the elements of a page together with the use of rules, and by lining up edges
of copy, headlines and graphics.

Opposition

uses contrasting visual concepts. That same Western Kansas "big sky" landscape becomes
very dramatic and expressive when a storm builds in the southwest. Principles can grow out
of any artistic device that is used to produce an effect on the viewer.

Paintings with high contrast - strong differences between light and dark, for example - have a
different feel than paintings with minimal contrast in light and dark, such as in Whistler
Nocturne series. In addition to light and dark, contrast can be differences in shape, color,
size, texture, type of line, etc. On a physiological level, our eyes differentiate between colors
and tone: the cones in our eyes see colour and the rods in our eyes see tone. Cones are
concentrated at the centre of our field of vision, and are related to visual intensity (the
sharpness and degree of scale for what is being seen) and the perception of colour. Whereas
rods, which give us the tonal quality of an image, are connected to night vision, motion
sensitivity and peripheral vision. This relevant to the need for tonal contrast in a painting
because tone is picked up in the peripheral vision, so the whole of the painting, not just the
small section you are concentrating on, is having an impact on the viewer. Tone makes us
look around the painting; a bland, mid-tone painting has nothing at the edge of the eye to
draw your attention onwards.

Scale

Scale is a relative level or degree. It’s a general measure of how much. Scale is a progressive
classification of some quality like size, amount, importance, or rank. In visual design when
we talk about scale we’re typically concerned with the quality of size, however color is also
on a scale, as is anything you can speak about in contrasting terms. Anytime you can make a
relative comparison between objects you have scale. Again scale is about relative
measurements. A single object has no scale until it’s seen in comparison with something else.
Of course the moment we place an element on the screen we have something to compare it to.
We can compare it to the format (the printed page, the browser window) the element is
placed within. We can compare it to the space around the element as placing a single element
on the page immediately creates a figure/ground relationship between element and
whitespace. We can compare it to some common standard. The important thing to keep in
mind is that scale needs comparison. It needs to measure something in relation to something
else.

Check Your Progress

1. What does texture in design refer to?
2. List the four principles of design.
3. List the three methods of implementing the principle of unity in a design.
4. Which methods can be used by a designer to incorporate emphasis in a design ?
3.4 VISUAL EFFECTS
When we analyze artwork we often start with visual effects. We notice something happening.
Then we try to figure out why it happens.

• Motion. Motion isn't a principle. It is one those magic effects when a still picture
has motion. There are lots of ways to get motion.
MOTION EXAMPLES
Sometimes it has to do with orientation.

•A diagonal line is more dynamic than a horizontal or vertical line. Sometimes motion
depends on the character of the element itself.
• A straight line may be less dynamic than a zigzag or a curving line.
• A blended area may appear to flow.

Depth. Depth is another magic effect. Illusion and magic are two threads of the
same cloth.

DEPTH EXAMPLES

Sometimes the illusion of depth has to do with orientation.

• If you want a chair or person to appear further away, you can place them higher on the
picture plane. Sometimes the illusion of depth depends on the character of the element
itself.
• A warm color can appear to project and cool color can appear to recede, other things being
equal.
• A light tone (value) can appear to project and dark tone can appear to recede.
3.5 PRINCIPLES OF ART AND COMPOSITION
The “principles of design” are mechanisms of arrangement and organization for the various
elements of design in artwork. Please note that different sources might list slightly different
versions of the “Principles of Design,” but the core fundamentals are essentially the same.

• Balance
• variety
• Depth
• Repetition
• Colour Saturation
• Overlapping

Balance

Balance is created in a work of art when textures, colors, forms, or shapes are combined
harmoniously. In this image, notice how the photographer achieves a sense of balance by
dividing the image into two sections: one half occupied by trees, and the other half by the
water.

Symmetrical balance: When one image is mirrored on the other side to repeat itself
Asymmetrical balance: When different types of elements create a visual balance.

Radial balance: The distribution of elements around a central point in all directions.

Here is an example of asymmetrical balance, showing a bright red apple in one corner
balanced by a large area of neutral color on the other side. Together, they work to create
balance in the overall composition

Variety

The counterweight to harmony and creates visual interest by slightly changing or using
different elements together in a composition. It can be created with contrast, change,
elaboration, or diversifying elements. With variety, it is important to consider how the
elements are working together so that you still have harmony and unity within a composition.
This image of different fruits and vegetables is an example of variety.
Depth

The area used or unused in a composition. Positive space – the area the objects/subject takes up.
Negative space – the area around, under, through and between. Gives the photo a 3-dimensional
feeling. (Depth) Foreground (closest), Middle ground, and Background (farthest). Can be open,
crowded, near, far, etc.

Repetition

Repeated use of a shape, color, or other art element or design in a work can help unify
different parts into a whole. The repetition might be limited to only an instance or two: not
enough to create a pattern or rhythm, but enough to cause a visual echo and reinforce or
accent certain aspects of the work.
Colour saturation

Colour saturation, sometimes called "colour intensity" or brightness can also give a feeling of
depth and space. Which of these butterflies are farther away? Most second graders can see
this effect when they are asked to look for it. These butterflies create the illusion of depth
even though they are all the same size.

From a perceptional point of view saturation influences the grade of purity or vividness of a
color/image. A desaturated image is said to be dull, less colorful or washed out but can also
make the impression of being softer.

We will clear up the term saturation from a color mixing point of view in the color spaces
section.

Overlapping

Overlapping is often used by artists to create depth. Young children try to avoid overlapping
in their work. Overlapping in art is the placement of objects over one another in order to
create the illusion of depth. Painting is a two-dimensional artistic expression. It has length
and width but no depth. It is necessary, therefore, for artists to provide viewers with some
sort of perspective in establishing size and distance in paintings. This is where overlapping
come into play.
Check Your Progress
1. What do you understand by the term visual effects?
2. What are the two most common types of visual effects?
3. Why it is important to apply the principle of balance in a design or composition ?
4. What are three types of balance?
5. What does overlapping in a design indicate?

3.6 SUMMARY
• Visual elements are basic ingredients of design composition. These elements include
colour, line, shape, value, texture, volume and space.
• A designer must make the best use of these elements in a design. When these
elements are used as per the principles of design, they ensure the success of the
design.
• The principles of composition also help in keeping a check on the structure of a
composition.
• The designer can make use of the principles of emphasis, harmony, unity, unity and
opposition to arrange the various elements in a design.
• Visual Effects do not form a part of these principles, rather they are the various effects
which when added the change the appearance in the design.
• Motion and depth are two such visual effects, which can be applied on the elements of
a composition. When the visual elements are placed in a design and principles of
designs and visual effects are being applied, it forms a composition.
• There are certain principles of composition, such as depth, variety, repetition,
overlapping, and colour saturation. These rules further enhance the look and feel of
composition.
• Hence, visual elements, visual effects, and principles of design and composition work
parallel in any design or composition.

3.7 KEY TERMS

Art elements: The elements of art are commonly used group of aspects of a work of art used
in teaching and analysis, in combination with the principles of art.

Colour tone: Colour tone is defined as a colour influenced by a complement, or gray tone.

Colour wheel: A chart in which complementary colours ( or their names ) are arranged on
opposite sides of a circle.
Composition: The organization of the art elements in a drawing or painting. These art
elements include shape, colour, movement, line, tone, colour, edges and perspective.

Focal point: The point at which all elements or aspects converge, centre of activity or
attention.

Orientation: The position or alignment relative or alignment to points of the compass or

other specific directions.

Visual art: The visual arts are forms that focus on the creation of works which are primary
visual in nature, such as drawing, painting, photography, printmaking and filmmaking.

Visual effects: The term given to a sub-category of special effects in which images are
created and manipulated for design. visual effects usually involve the integration of live
action footage with computer generated imagery or other elements (such as pyrotechnics or
model work) in order to create environments or scenarios which look realistic.

Visual Weight: Visual weight is the ability of a region or art element within a composition
to draw attention to it. Visual weight is often created through the use of contrast and/ or
through the use of colour.

3.8 QUESTION AND EXERCISES

Short-Answer Question

1. How can a colour wheel help you in deciding colours for your design?
2. How can you achieve harmony in a design?
3. When do you call a design or composition unified ?
4. List the various principles of composition you learned in this unit.
5. Define one method to use repetition in a design.
6. What do you understand by the term colour temperature?
7. What are analogous and monochromatic colours?

Long-Answer Question

1. Explain the various visual elements with examples.

2. What are the different ways of expressing emphasis in a design?
3. What are the basic visual effects you can create in use in your design ?
4. What are the different types of balances you can use in your design? Explain.
5. Explain colour saturation and overlapping in design.
Unit 4 Creative Thinking Techniques

Introduction

A way of looking at problems or situations from a fresh perspective that suggests unorthodox
solutions (which may look unsettling at first). Creative thinking can be stimulated both by an
unstructured process such as brainstorming, and by a structured process such as lateral
thinking.

Creative thinking is the process which we use when we come up with a new idea. It is the
merging of ideas which have not been merged before. Brainstorming is one form of creative
thinking: it works by merging someone else's ideas with your own to create a new one. You
are using the ideas of others as a stimulus for your own.This creative thinking process can
be accidental or deliberate.

Without using special techniques creative thinking does still occur, but usually in
the accidental way; like a chance happening making you think about something in a different
way and you then discovering a beneficial change. Other changes happen slowly through
pure use of intelligence and logical progression. Using this accidental or logical progression
process, it often takes a long time for products to develop and improve. In an accelerating and
competitive world this is obviously disadvantageous.

Using special techniques, deliberate creative thinking can be used to develop new ideas.
These techniques force the mergence of a wide range of ideas to spark off new thoughts and
processes. Brainstorming is one of these special techniques, but traditionally it starts with
unoriginal ideas.

Developments of products occur much more rapidly using these deliberate techniques than by
accident. Many people known for being creative use these techniques, but are not aware they
are doing so because they have not been formally trained in them. If you use these deliberate
techniques during advanced brainstorming sessions then you too will be more creative.
4.1 Unit Objectives

After going through this unit, you will be able to

• Understand what is brainstorming

• Various methods of brainstorming
• Journalistic brainstorming & its methods
• Importance of historical examination
• Block busting technique
• Using Checklist
• Use of check list as a block busting technique.

4.2 Understand what is brainstorming

Brainstorming is the name given to a situation when a group of people meet to generate new
ideas around a specific area of interest. Using rules which remove inhibitions, people are able
to think more freely and move into new areas of thought and so create numerous new ideas
and solutions. The participants shout out ideas as they occur to them and then build on the
ideas raised by others. All the ideas are noted down and are not criticized. Only when the
brainstorming session is over are the ideas evaluated.This is the traditional way brainstorming
is done. The aim of this website is to train you in the methods of traditional brainstorming
and then to move on and discover a series of advanced techniques available to you.

Some other definitions:

• Brainstorming is a process for generating new ideas

• Brainstorming is "a conference technique by which a group attempts to find a solution
for a specific problem by amassing all the ideas spontaneously by its members" - Alex
Osborn
• To brainstorm is to use a set of specific rules and techniques which encourage and
spark off new ideas which would never have happened under normal circumstances

Brainstorming with a group of people is a powerful technique. Brainstorming creates new

ideas, solves problems, motivates and develops teams. Brainstorming motivates because it
involves members of a team in bigger management issues, and it gets a team working
together. However, brainstorming is not simply a random activity. Brainstorming needs to be
structured and it follows brainstorming rules. The brainstorming process is described below,
for which you will need a flip-chart or alternative. This is crucial as Brainstorming needs to
involve the team, which means that everyone must be able to see what's happening.
Brainstorming places a significant burden on the facilitator to manage the process, people's
involvement and sensitivities, and then to manage the follow up actions. Use Brainstorming
well and you will see excellent results in improving the organization, performance, and
developing the team.

4.3 Various methods of brainstorming

Choose a recorder.- Someone must be put in charge of writing down all the ideas. Preferably, the
ideas should be written on a board or butcher papered walls so that the whole brainstorming group can
see them. Lacking this, ideas should be put down on paper. In an ideal session, the recorder should be
a non-participant in the brainstorming session, since it's hard to be thoughtful and creative and write
down everything at the same time. But in small sessions, the recorder is usually a participant, too.

For a one-person brainstorming session, using an idea map on a large piece of paper is useful. Butcher
paper on the walls is good, too. (Large writing helps keep your ideas in front of you. In fact, some
people have said that using 11 by 17 inch paper instead of 8.5 by 11 inch increases their creativity.
Why not try it?)

2. Organize the chaos. For groups of more than three or four, have a moderator to choose who will
offer an idea next, so that several people don't speak at once. The moderator should prefer those with
ideas that tag onto previous ideas, then those with new ideas. If necessary the moderator will also
remind members of the group not to inject evaluation into the session (in case a member tasks, sneers,
says, "Oh, come on," and so forth).

3. Keep the session relaxed and playful. The creative juices flow best when participants are relaxed
and enjoying themselves and feeling free to be silly or playful. Eat popcorn or pizza or ice cream or
make paper airplanes or doodles while you work, even if the problem itself is deadly serious like
cancer or child abuse. Don't keep reminding everyone that "this is a serious problem" or "that was a
tasteless joke."

As an aid to relaxation and a stimulation to creativity, it is often useful to begin with a ten-minute
warm-up session, where an imaginary problem is tackled. Thinking about the imaginary problem
loosens people up and puts them into a playful mood. Then the real problem at hand can be turned to.
Some imaginary problem topics might include these:

how to heat a house more efficiently

how to light a house with a single light bulb

how to improve your travel from home to work

inventing a new game for the Olympics

how to improve institutional food without increasing its cost

4. Limit the session. A typical session should be limited to about fifteen or twenty minutes. Longer
than that tends to become dragging. You should probably not go beyond thirty minutes, though thirty
is the "ideal" length.

5. Make copies. After the session, neaten up the list and make copies for each member of the session.
No attempt should be made to put the list in any particular order.

6. Add and evaluate. The next day (not the same day) the group should meet again. First, ideas
thought of since the previous session should be shared (entered on the photocopied lists). Then the
group should evaluate each of the ideas and develop the most promising ones for practical application.

During the evaluation session, wild ideas are converted to practical ones or used to suggest realistic
solutions. The emphasis is now on analysis and real world issues. Some barnstormers divide the ideas
found to be useful into three lists:

A. Ideas of immediate usefulness. These are the ideas you will be able to use right now.
B. Areas for further exploration. These are ideas that need to be researched, followed up, thought
about, and discussed more fully, and so on.

C. New approaches to the problem. These are ideas that suggest new ways of looking at the situation.

Note here that evaluation does not take place on the same day as the brainstorming session. This fact
keeps the idea session looser (no fear that evaluation is coming soon) and allows incubation time for
more ideas and time for thinking about the ones suggested.

4.4 Variations in Brainstorming

1. Stop and Go.
For stop and go brainstorming, ideas are generated for three to five minutes. Then the group is
silent (and thinking) for three to five minutes. Then ideas are given out for another three to five.
This pattern alternates for the entire session.

2. Sequencing.

In this technique, the moderator goes in order from one member of the group to the next in turn
or sequence. Each member gives whatever ideas he then has, and they are written down. If a
member has no ideas, he just says, "Pass," and the next member responds. This movement in turn
or around the table continues throughout the session. (Sequencing has been said to nearly double
the number of ideas generated in a brainstorming session.)
 4.4 Idea Generating Questions

Asking questions to stimulate curiosity and creativity has proven helpful for all kinds of
endeavours, whether problem solving, product development, inventing, or communication. A
written list of mind-stimulating questions is useful because it reminds us of approaches and
possibilities that we otherwise would not have in mind. Yes, it is sometimes possible to be
creative in a thorough and even orderly way.

The Journalistic Six

These are the six key questions that journalism students are taught to answer somewhere in
their news articles to make sure that they have covered the whole story. For creative thinkers,
these questions stimulate thinking about the idea in question and allow approaches to it from
various angles.

1. Who? (Actor or Agent) Who is involved? What are the people aspects of the problem? Who
did it, will do it? Who uses it, wants it? Who will benefit, will be injured, will be included,
will be excluded?
2. What? (Act) What should happen? What is it? What was done, ought to be done, was not
done? What will be done if X happens? What went or could go wrong? What resulted in
success?
3. When? (Time or Timing) When will, did, should this occur or be performed? Can it be
hurried or delayed? Is a sooner or later time be preferable? When should the time be if X
happens?
4. Where? (Scene or Source) Where did, will, should this occur or be performed? Where else is
a possibility? Where else did the same thing happen, should the same thing happen? Are
other places affected, endangered, protected, aided by this location? Effect of this location on
actors, actions?
5. Why? (Purpose) Why was or is this done, avoided, permitted? Why should it be done,
avoided, permitted? Why did or should actor do it? Different for another actor, act, time,
place? Why that particular action, rule, idea, solution, problem, disaster, and not another?
Why that actor, time, location, and not another?
6. How? (Agency or Method) How was it, could it be, should it be done, prevented, destroyed,
made, improved, altered? How can it be described, understood? How did beginning lead to
conclusion?

4.7 Historical Examination

These questions are especially useful for generating ideas for improving something (the
evolutionary approach), but they also help to break thinking out of the evolutionary mode and
put it into the revolutionary mode by returning the thinker to the origin and purpose of the
idea or solution. By returning to the roots of the problem, a new vision can be created.

1. Essence. What is it? object, concept? What is it made of? What is its real, elementary
nature? What are its parts? What is it like, unlike? (Similes and metaphors help in
understanding abstractions). What is it related to? What are its various kinds, facets, shades?
What is it a part of? Which part of it is unusual or outstanding? In what forms does it appear?
Is it typical or atypical of its kind? What is it not? What is it opposed to? How is it different?
What makes it different?

2. Origin. Where did it come from? How was it made or conceived or developed? What
caused it? If an idea, how did it arise? Are its origins meaningful now? What makes it spread
or multiply or gain adherents? What was the reason behind it? Is the reason still valid or
useful? Why? Why not? Is it still needed? What influences it? Does it change? Can it, should
it be changed, strengthened, eliminated? What could have prevented, delayed, encouraged it?

3. Purpose. What does it do? How does it work? What is its purpose? Is the purpose
fulfilled? Better than by its predecessor? Can it, should it be improved? Is it helpful or
harmful in intent? What are its implications; what does it lead to? Does it have obvious or
hidden consequences? Does it have more than one purpose? What are its immediate effects
and its long-term effects? Is its actual function the same as the original purpose intended by
its originator? Can it be put to other uses?

4. Import. What is its overall significance? What is its significance to man, environment,
civilization, happiness, virtue, safety, comfort, etc.? How is it important? Is it a key element
in life, civilization, local area, one man's existence? Is it necessary? Is it desirable?

5. Reputation. What do you think about it? What are your underlying assumptions? What do
others think about it? Do you find consensus, division? Is it good, bad, helpful, harmful in
fact or in the opinion of others? Can you resolve any differences between truth and opinion,
intent, and actuality, pro and con members? What weaknesses are commonly identified? Are
there obvious areas of desired change or improvement or elimination?

4.8 Block Busting Technique

Creative Block Busting is more than brainstorming. It focuses on solving an issue in an
enjoyable, non-threatening manner.

A Creative Block Busting workshop is successful, only if it delivers results. Therefore, the
whole process is tailored to arrive at fresh, yet actionable ideas. Clients use Creative Block
Busting for helping their people to acquire creative thinking skills. They also use it for
generating new product development ideas, solving business/marketing problems, arriving at
unique differentiation ideas for product/service and providing inputs for communication
strategy development.

It is like a software for the mind. You can apply it to any issue in any function.

It is a different kind of brainstorming. It is business focused and result oriented. It starts with
the premise that everyone is creative but most lack the opportunity to express their creativity
All Creative Block Busting Workshops are not the same. It is critical to plan every workshop
meticulously, to get the results that client’s desire.

We therefore spend considerable time before the workshop, to understand client's needs and
what must the Creative Block Busting Workshop deliver. This will provide inputs for
designing the workshop in relevant way.

Creative Block Busting - What it does

Many people complain of not being creative when in fact their creativity has merely been
blocked. Once the blocks are removed, nearly everyone can exercise a high degree of
creativity. Several techniques exist which will help remove the usual blocks to creativity, but
before we discuss these, we should say a few words about the blocks themselves.

Sources of Blocking
1. Functional Fixation. As we mentioned earlier, functional fixation arises when someone is
unable to see beyond the historical or accepted use for an item, often identified by its name or
label. Thus, for example, a screwdriver is a tool for tightening or loosening screws, just as its
name says. A person suffering from functional fixation would be unable to see any other uses
for the item. But, of course, a screwdriver can also be used as a paint can opener, an ice pick,
a plumb bob, a paper weight, and so on.

Similarly, to see a length of water pipe and to think only of water pipe may block your
thinking if you are need of pry bar, a blow gun, a plant prop, a flag pole, a fishing rod, a
measuring stick, or something else that the pipe might serve for.

An interesting example of how people are almost by nature functionally fixated comes from
an experiment. Several people were placed in a room where a short length of pipe containing
a ping pong ball was anchored in the floor. The task of the people was to remove the ball
from the pipe without damaging either. Several sets of people were given this same task. For
some of the sets, a bucket of water was placed on the floor. When this was the case, over 80
percent of the groups solved the problem by pouring water into the pipe and floating the ball
out. For some of the other sets, a pitcher of ice water and some drinking glasses were placed
on a table in the room. When this was the case, fewer than 40 percent of the groups solved
the problem by using the water in the pitcher. The pitcher of water and the drinking glasses so
fixated them on the idea of refreshment that they could not see beyond the ostensible purpose
of the pitcher to its use as a solution to their problem.

Block Busting Techniques

1. Uses For. This is a simple technique that can be used for mental stimulation or practical
application, depending on what you have in mind at the time. It is an excellent tool for
breaking you out of a functionally fixated mind-set. To use this technique, think of an item or
object, usually a common one like a brick, toothpick, pencil, or bucket, and set the task of
thinking of all the possible uses for that object, without regard to what the object is normally
used for, what it is named, or how it is usually thought of.

Sometimes a time limit, like three to five minutes, is given. Other times a quantity limit, like 25 to 100
is given. All the techniques of idea generation are used, from checklist to attribute analysis to random
stimulation.

For example: What are the possible uses for a brick?

Ideas: doorstop, boat anchor, build a wall, build a walk, ballast, sanding block, powder and
make dye, put on white background and make a sign (red letters), nut cracker, shoes,
straightedge, red chalk, stop signal (use something green like a cucumber for go), heat
reservoir, leaf press, paper weight, step stool, target for shooting, children's toys, scale weight
standard, distance standard, definition of red, water holder (soaked), tamper, pattern maker
(in soft material), pendulum weight, bell clapper, roofing material (crushed)

Another example: What are the possible uses for a steak knife?
Ideas: hot pad, planter stick or prop, hole digger, popsicle stick, bubble wand (through hole in
handle), flipping tool or spring, hammer, gun sight, fishing weight/float, compass (magnetize
the steel), plumb bob, drill, can opener, carving tool, electrical (knife) switch or other
electrical conductor use, awl, measuring device (two knives long and three knives wide),
shim, design maker in wet plaster (serrated edge), writing instrument (dip in ink), all cutting
and chopping uses, guitar pick, branding or soldering device (get red hot first), ice climbing
aid (hook or glue to boots with part of blade down into ground)

__________________________________________________________________
____

Try It Yourself

Uses For. Choose one of the items below and think of at least 25 original uses for it. (That is,
you cannot list things that the item is already used for.) The uses can be fanciful, but should
at least approach practicality. Describe each use in a sentence or two.

Example: Uses for a steak knife

1. Drill a hole in the tip and use it as a "knife switch" to turn electricity on and off.
2. Use the wood or plastic handles of two or three to make a hot pad for serving casseroles or
soup in hot containers.
3. Use it to measure a spot for a new sofa, so when you go to the store you will know how
many "steak knife units" long your new sofa can be.

4. Use it to drill holes in plasterboard walls.

a cardboard box a towel

a nail a sheet of paper

a spoon a fan

a roll of adding machine paper a ball point pen

the yellow pages an inner tube

a candle three feet of Scotch tape

popsicle sticks a plastic drinking glass

a toothpick a marble

old newspapers ball bearings that aren't round

worn out automobile tires non-returnable soda bottles

tons of broken rubber bands) pencils

Versa Tarp. You have been hired by Acme Manufacturing to write an advertising brochure
for its new product, Versa Tarp. The product is an 8 by 10 foot plastic tarp with the usual
spaced grommets and reinforcing. (You can see tarps like this at most hardware stores.) In the
brochure, Acme wants you to list as many good, practical uses for this tarp as you can, to
show just how versatile it is. List at least 25 practical uses, with explanations if necessary.
Drawings would be good, too.

Hole Punch. Redwood Mills, Incorporated is a manufacturer of paper. A principal product of

theirs is three-hole punch notebook paper for schools. A byproduct of making this paper is
tons and tons of punched paper holes. You have been hired to suggest as many uses for these
punched pieces of paper as possible. Be imaginative and practical. Think of at least 25 uses.
Steamer. The Heiss manufacturing company of Germany has been making a steam-
producing home appliance, designed to be used to steam milk in the making of cappuccino.
Unfortunately for the company, its competitors now incorporate a steam maker right into the
cappuccino maker, so that a steamer-only design no longer sells. You have been hired by a
liquidator company that has acquired 40,000 of these steamers to write an advertising
brochure, describing as many practical uses for this steamer as you can. Your basic task is to
think of what steam can be used for. Describe at least 25 good uses, with any necessary
explanations or drawings.

______________________________________________________________________

2. Improvements to. "Improvements to" is the counterpart of "uses for." Whereas "uses for"
concentrates on using a given item, often unchanged, for multiple purposes different from the
item's original purpose, the "improvements to" technique focuses on altering an item to
enhance its original, given purpose. The item in question can be any of several kinds and is
not limited to objects.

A. Objects. The first and most obvious "thing" to improve is an object, usually something
common that most people would never think of changing. The classic, textbook example item
is the coffee cup. Suggested improvements have included things like

• multiple handles
• anti-skid
• anti-tip over
• anti-spill (lids)
• built-in heater
• decorations
• wheels
• tea bag holder on side
• insulated
• self-brewing
• self-cleaning

and so forth. The improvements ideally should move away from obvious bolt-on things,
however. For example, in the problem, "Think of several ways to improve books," the first
things that come to mind might be the addition or repair ones like

• better binding
• lighter weight
• lower cost
• clearer type
• more colour pictures
• better indexes

but we might also think about more imaginative improvements like

• books that read themselves (talk to you)

• books with three dimensional pictures
• books with multiple reading paths
 • books that explain their hard parts (better glosses?)
• books that project on the wall so you don't have to hold them

B. Places, Institutions, Things. In addition to the object, a second kind of thing that
improvements for can be applied to is a place, institution, or thing. For example, list ten ways
to improve a college, or a marriage, or a shopping mall, or the local church, or the road
system, or communications channels (telephone, TV, radio). Improvements to these areas
require more thoughtful and elaborate proposals, often involving improvements in attitudes,
beliefs, behaviour, relationships, or other non-tangible things, as well as changes in physical
technology. A piece of wood and a tube of glue are no longer sufficient to effect
improvement.

C. Ideas. A third area of improvement is even more removed from wood and glue: the
improvement of ideas or abstractions. How can we improve art or the writing of history or the
application of personal values to our actions?

In all of these cases, problem exploration (an exploration and articulation of needs) is usually
the first step. What is there about a coffee cup that is deficient or that could be made better?
What about shopping malls do you (and most people) dislike? How is the bulk of recorded or
taught history insufficient or imperfect--what keeps it from being described as excellent?

Again, remember the constructive discontent philosophy. The coffee cup, the local church,
the college, art, all may be really good and suitable and "satisfactory" in what they do; to look
for ways to improve them should not imply condemnation or rejection. This "either it's fine or
it's bad" attitude often gets in the way of thinking calmly about improvements. In personal
relationships, romantic or supervisor/employee, in techniques and policies, whenever
someone suggests an improvement, the typical response is, "So what's so terrible about it
now?" Be sensitive, therefore, to the ego needs of the human element involved in improving
things. Don't rush into the cafeteria and declare that you are there to make the putrid food
edible at last--think of the people who make it now. Don't rush up to your boss and declare
that you are about to reveal why his management style stinks. Don't call your best friend and
offer to reform her disgusting and selfish personality.

Improvements To. Choose one of the following and think of at least ten practical ways it can
be improved. Describe each improvement in a sentence or two (why is it an improvement?)
and supply any needed drawings.

pencil calculator spoon

paper postal system tires

lighting in a room desk controlling a car

museums dating spelling rules

court system telephone ball-point pen

textbook hamburgers telephone book

flashlight bicycle postage stamp

hair dryer bus window shades

You will probably want to submit drawings with this project to show what your
improvements will look like.

______________________________________________________________________

An Idea List of Ways to Improve Something

• Simplify--remove complexity
• Apply to new use
• Automate
• Reduce Cost
• Make easier to use, understand
• Reduce fear to own, use
• Make safer
• Give more performance, capacity
• Make faster, less waiting
• Provide more durability, reliability
• Give better appearance
• Create more acceptance by others
• Add features, functions
• Integrate functions
• Make more flexible, versatile
• Make lighter weight--or heavier
• Make smaller--or larger
• Make more powerful
• Reduce or eliminate drawbacks, bad side effects
• Make more elegant
• Give better shape, design, style
• Provide better sensory appeal (taste, feel, look, smell, sound)
• Provide better psychological appeal (understandable, acceptable)
• Provide better emotional appeal (happy, warm, satisfying, enjoyable, fun, likable,
"neat")
• Aim toward ideal rather than immediate goals
• Give larger capacity
• Make portable
• Make self-cleaning, easy to clean
• Make more accurate
• Make quieter

What-Iffing. A major block to creativity for many of us is the mind's fierce grasp on
reality. This very factor that keeps us sane also keeps us from thinking beyond what we
know to be true. What-iffing is a tool for releasing the mind, for delivering us from being
blocked by reality.

• In its simplest form, what-iffing involves describing an imagined action or solution

and then examining the probable associated facts, consequences, or events. Instead of
quickly saying, "That sounds dumb," or "That would never work," and leaving our
criticism vague, we trace as exactly as our reasonable minds can generate the specific
implications or consequences of the newly imagined fact.
• For example, what if automobiles were all owned by the government and everybody
had a key and could use any car that was handy? Consequences: Parking lot size
could be reduced. There would probably be more car pooling with strangers. If cars
were maintained by the government, too, some would be in better shape than now, but
others would be in worse shape--no pride in personal ownership. On sunny days cars
would be plentiful, but on rainy days, you might get stuck at the shopping center. Cars
that broke down would be abandoned. You couldn't lock things in your car. You'd
never know if the car you drove to a location (like the movie theater at night) would
be there when you got out.
• Another example might be to ask, "What if we do nothing about the problem?" Then
seek as accurately as possible the consequences.
• On another level, what-iffing allows us to create a completely new reality, to establish
a new chain of being or relationships, to change the unchangeable in hope of
generating a new perspective on a problem or a new idea.
• For example: What if rocks were soft? We could put big ones in our houses like
pillows to lean on in the living room. We could use them like "medicine balls" to toss
to each other for exercise. We could line roads with piles of rocks to keep cars from
damage when control was lost on dangerous corners. We could jump off high
buildings onto rock piles. Crushed rock pits could be used to jump into by athletes.
On the other hand, rock grinding wheels wouldn't work anymore. Concrete, made of
rock, would be soft. A cinderblock cell would be a padded cell.
• Another example: What if we could see odors? You'd know the source of the bad
smell in the kitchen--a plant, garbage disposal, wastebasket, old food in the
refrigerator. You could see the perfume as it wafted off the girl wearing it--a visible
"come on." Since we can see farther than we can smell, you could see who had an
orange or banana or Limburger cheese sandwich in his lunch bag from across the
room. Visible odors could be socially embarrassing in ways not necessary to detail.
• Whether or not the "seeing odors" thought suggests the invention of an odor detecting
device, a super sniffer like the ones used by the U.S. military to sniff out enemy
soldiers, a main benefit of practicing what-iffing is to train the mind to explore
unreality or imagined reality, to think about, for a few minutes, the necessary, logical
consequences or facts needed to support such a change in real things. Too often when
someone gets a new idea, little attempt is made to think about its logical consequences
for a few minutes.
• For example, we have heard some people say that the United States should legalize
drugs like cocaine because then the pushers and organized crime couldn't make
 money and would stop pushing them and the drug problem would go away. Okay,
what if drugs were legal? Would they be legal for everyone, even children? Well, no,
you'd have to be 18 to buy them. But then wouldn't the pushers concentrate on selling
drugs to those under 18 instead of to adults, which would be a worse situation than we
have now? Or, would adults stop using cocaine if it were legal and cheap? Or would it
be legal and expensive? And so on.
• As I said, too often we simply stop thinking altogether when something contrary to
fact comes across our minds or else we think about it in the most illogical and
impractical way. When we ask, "What if the sky were green?" the response we tend to
get, either from others or from ourselves, is, "Well, the sky isn't green, so why think
about it?" But if nothing else, thinking about it is good practice at logical thinking.
• In more practical terms, though, thinking about what does not exist is about the only
way we have of eventually making it exist. In other words, the first step to
implementing a new reality is to imagine it.
• Notice when you mention a "what if" to your friends, their reaction will probably be
to laugh and change the subject, or to laugh and suggest one funny consequence.
There is little attempt to trace probable consequences thoroughly, to outline a full set
of associated realities. By not doing so, we are in danger of cutting off many new
ideas.
• Attribute Analysis. Attribute analysis is the process of breaking down a problem,
idea, or thing into attributes or component parts and then thinking about the attributes
rather than the thing itself.
• For example, let's say you work for a ball bearing manufacturer and you discover that
a flaw in one of the machines has caused the production of 800 million slightly out-
of-round ball bearings. You could ask, "What can I do with 800 million slightly out-
of-round ball bearings?" and, of course, a few things come to mind, like sling shot
ammo and kid's marbles. But you could also break the ball bearings down into
attributes, such as roundish, heavy, metal, smooth, shiny, hard, magnetizable. Then
you could ask, "What can I do with 800 million heavy things?" or "What can I do with
800 million shiny things?"
• Further, you can focus on each identified attribute and ask questions about it, like this:
• What can heavy things be used for? paperweights, ship ballast, podium anchors, tree
stands, scale weights, and so on
What can be done with metal things? conduct electricity, magnetize them, melt them,
make tools with them
• To solve the problem of poverty, ask, what are the attributes of poverty
Some answers: people, crime, lack of food, lack of goods, large families,
psychological lacks, low self esteem, welfare, lack of jobs, lack of job skills, lack of
value-rich upbringing, lack of education, lack of motivation, poor economic judgment
(poor buying skills), poor quality housing, poor quality transportation.
• Then, each of these attributes can be addressed, either directly, or through further
attribute analysis. For example, take "poor economic judgment." What are the
attributes of that?
Some possibilities: buying low quality items, buying smaller packages at higher price
per ounce, wasteful spending habits, tendency to "blow a wad" on payday, inefficient
food buying (expensive rather than quantity or health considerations), lack of market
competition (and hence higher prices), lack of ability to budget, tendency to use
money for non food items like alcohol, inability to calculate price per ounce, etc. to
determine greatest economy
 • Discovering attributes can be aided by the use of checklists. For example:
Physical: color, weight, material, speed, odor, size, structure, taste
Psychological: appearance, symbolism, emotive ("happy smell of detergent")
Functional: intended uses, applications, how it does what it does
People: who's involved
Miscellaneous: cost, reputation, origin, class it belongs to, definition
• Attribute analysis is sometimes described as a smashing technique, because it smashes
our fixed and frozen collection of thoughts about a problem or idea. Notice that this is
accomplished by refocusing onto something belonging to the problem but more
general or abstract or more specific and concrete. Often, attribute analysis is another
way of recognizing that a given problem is really a collection of interrelated smaller
problems. And often it is a way of perceiving the variables that make up a situation or
thing in a way that allows us to change one or more and improve the whole thing.
• Example problem: How can we read and remember better? First, what are the
attributes of reading and remembering?
Possibilities: books, repetition, visualization, understanding (comprehension),
quantity of material and number of details, length of time desired to remember (short
or long or permanent)
What are the attributes of visualization? ... Solution: draw pictures of what you read.
What are the attributes of understanding? ... Simplify text by rewriting it or
summaries of it into your own words
• Another problem: What are the uses for a yellow pencil? What are the attributes?
Possibilities: yellow paint, hexagonal, pointed, rubber end, metal ring, wood, graphite
rod, long and stick-like shape
What are the attributes of wood? burns, floats, electrical insulator, nailable, paintable,
gluable, structural component, soaks up liquid slowly, can be sanded or carved
• 5. Morphological Analysis. Morphological analysis builds upon attribute analysis by
generating alternatives for each attribute, thereby producing new possibilities.
• The rules are simple:
• A. List the attributes of the problem, object, or situation as you would in a standard
attribute analysis.
• B. Under each attribute, list all the alternatives you can think of.
• C. Choose an alternative from each column at random and assemble the choices into a
possibility for a new idea. Repeat the choosing and assembly many times.Example
problem: Develop a better bandaid. What are the current attributes of a bandaid? In
the table below the attributes are listed in the first row and alternates are listed under
each attribute:

stick on flesh colored plastic rectangular gauzed

magnetic red or green cloth round medicated

tie on flower pattern paper triangular cellulose

glue on transparent Tyvek octagon sawdust

paint on black metal square plastishred

velcro words (ouch) wood trapezoid plastic

clamp on stripes rubber animals cotton

• Example problem: Improve the textbook

What are the current attributes of a textbook?

size/shape binding cover pages type pictures

small perfect hardback large Roman photos

large sewn paper small varied drawings

long spiral plastic glossy color color

round left none thick highlighted holograms

micro top thin large vertical U-draw

. Manipulative Verbs. Taking a hint from Osborn's questions above, some creative thinkers
have asked, Why not use a large list of action verbs to stimulate creative thinking? And that is
just what manipulative verbs are all about. The list could be very long; here we have just a
few. You can make your own list if you like. Choose one of the verbs and think about how it
can be applied to your idea or problem.

For example: The problem is to improve a table. The verb is inflate. What does that suggest?
Make the table larger, floating, made of inflated vinyl, thick top and legs, high price to cater
to upscale consumers, air vents in table to blow out cool or heated air or to suck in smoke
from cigarettes. And so on. Here are a few verbs to begin with:

freeze crush rotate

heat bend transpose

melt paint display

loosen stretch submerge

twist repeat automate

7. Reversal. The reversal method for examining a problem or generating new ideas takes a
situation as it is and turns it around, inside out, backwards, or upside down. A given situation
can be "reversed" in several ways; there is no one formulaic way.

For example, the situation, "a teacher instructing students" could be reversed as

• students instructing the teacher

• the teacher uninstructing students
• students instructing themselves
• students instructing each other
• teacher instructing himself
• students uninstructing (correcting?) the teacher

Example problem: a motorist came up behind a flock of sheep in the middle of the road and
told the shepherd to move the sheep to the side so that he could drive through. The shepherd
knew that on such a narrow roadside, he could not easily keep all his sheep off the road at
once. Reversal: Instead of "drive around the sheep," drive the sheep around the car: have the
car stop and drive the sheep around and in back of it.

Example: going on vacation: bring vacation home, stay on vacation most of year and then "go
on work" for two weeks, make work into a vacation, send someone on vacation for you to
bring back photos and souvenirs, etc.

Example: how can management improve the store?

• how can the store improve management?

• how can the store improve itself?
• how can management make the store worse?
• how can the store make itself worse?
• how can the store hinder management?

Note that in some reversals, ideas are generated which then can be reversed into an idea
applicable to the original problem. Example from reversal, "How can management hurt the
store?" Hurt it by charging high prices on low quality goods, dirty the floors, be rude to
customers, hire careless employees, encourage shoplifting, don't put prices on anything and
charge what you feel like, or have to ask for a price check on every item. These bad things
can then be reversed, as in, be nice and helpful to customers, make sure all items are priced,
etc., and supply a good number of ideas. Sometimes it's easier to think negatively first and
then reverse the negatives.

Example: What can I do to make my relationship with my boss or spouse better? Reversal:
what can I do to make it worse? Have temper tantrums, use insults, pretend not to hear, etc.
Reverse: control temper, use compliments, be solicitous to needs and requests.

In another example, a variety store chain was being hurt by the competition. Some possible
reversals include these:

• how can the store hurt competition?

• how can competition help the store?
• how can the competition hurt itself?
 • how can the store help itself?

The second reversal, "How can competition help the store?" was chosen and was
implemented by sending employees to competing stores every week to examine displays,
sales, floor plans, goods quality and selection, anything that appeared to be effective or
useful. The employees brought these ideas back to company, compared, and implemented the
best in the store. Result: competition helped the store.

The value of reversal is its "provocative rearrangement of information" (de Bono's term).
Looking at a familiar problem or situation in a fresh way can suggest new solutions or
approaches. It doesn't matter whether the reversal makes sense or not.

Analogy and Metaphor. Whether you are teaching someone else something new or trying to
learn something yourself or trying to solve a problem, one of the best ways for doing that is
to compare the unfamiliar, unknown, or problematic with something familiar and
understandable. This is the method of analogy, to find a familiar thing or process that seems
somewhat like the idea or problem to be clarified.

In creative thinking, analogies are used for their suggestive qualities, to see what ideas they
can break loose, and especially for helping to examine the problem better. By searching for
several points of similarity between the analogy and the problem, new aspects of the problem
are revealed and new approaches arise.

Example problem: Devise a better way to find your way driving through the fog.
Analogy: This is like a nearsighted person finding his way around. How does he do that?
feels with his hands, looks at the ground, uses glasses, waves a cane, asks directions.
Ideas: feel around--a radar system or fog lights or other feelers, uses glasses--develop a vision
enhancing device, such as night light amplification, looks at ground--develop system for car
to follow a track on the ground.

Another analogy for the same problem: This is like a traveler in a strange country trying to
find his way to a particular location. Use direction signs, radio stations with tourist
broadcasts. The traveler goes slow, asks directions, uses guidebook and perhaps foreign
language dictionary. What is similar in the problem?
Ideas: direction signs--put signs or lights along the side of fog shrouded roads, asks
directions--an electronic query system in the car?

A metaphor is a comparison between two unlike things, in which one thing is identified with
the other. In problem solving, the use of metaphor helps to break out of a stereotyped or
obvious view. Again, similarities between these two essentially unlike things are looked for.

For example: This problem is a real doughnut. My work schedule is a tree or barbed wire
fence or brick wall or flowerpot.
Hmm. My work schedule is a flowerpot, and right now there are too many flowers in it and
not enough water. So I need more water or fewer flowers if I want healthy blossoms. I had
been thinking in terms of fewer flowers (fewer things to do), but now I see that if I use more
water (get some help and support), then I can do the same amount of work without suffering.

There is still some good thinking in traditional metaphors, like society as a ship, hierarchies
as a great chain, and so on. For example, "History's not my cup of tea." Well, what is your
cup of tea? What do you really like? A subject that's hot, sweet, strong, clear, weak,
brimming over, aromatic, mixed with cream, flavored with honey or orange blossoms? What
are the corresponding realities to each part of the metaphor? Strong equals weighty, technical,
concrete? Or orange blossom equals improved with esthetics, etc. But new metaphors are
often the most revealing. So discover your own.

______________________________

Trigger Concepts. A trigger concept (or idea seed or random seed) is an idea creating
technique operated by bringing an unrelated idea into the problem and forcing connections or
similarities between the two.

Example problem: improve TV programmingTrigger concept: road

Questions of association: How is TV programming like a road? (a journey, dangerous curves,
linear progress--would better continuity improve TV? scenery makes roads interesting); Does
TV programming have a road in it? (bumpy, rough, leading astray); What do roads do? They
take you somewhere. Does TV programming take you somewhere? Could improved
programming do this better? More location filming? More programs from abroad? Programs
that take viewerson intellectual journey?What are roads like? ribbons, tourist havens between
the scenery, the route to something else, a path toward real life. What about TV programs that
are the route to something else, like happiness, education, thinking, art, escape

Another Example Problem: How can we individualize mass education so that students
receive as much personal attention and instruction as possible?
Trigger concept: HatmakerIdeas: put it on your head, iron each one out, custom made hats,
custom made heads, custom made textbooks or information (computer generated?), hatboxes
of knowledge, students choose a boxful of information to master, multiple hats like multiple
disciplines, one hat at a time, one subject at a time? one student at a time? meet twenty
students for fifteen minutes each

As strange as the trigger concept method may sound at first, it can work quite well. And,
oddly enough, any random seed will be fruitful if you are patient and energetic.

For example, in his book, The Care and Feeding of Ideas, James Adams gives the following
problem and random seed as an exercise: "Assume that you have been hired as a consultant
by a restaurant that is having business problems. See how many ways you can think of to
improve the business of the restaurant using the concept of a runover dead cat."What are the
possibilities here? Cat guts, catgut, tennis racket--make the restaurant a sports club like place
or decorate it with a sports theme (The Avon River Rowing Club?), or install game machines
(video) or put in a giant screen TV and show football games on Monday nights. Flat cat, tire
tread marks, artsy in the avant garde area--add to the restaurant an art gallery with modern art
on the walls, put in chrome and glass and high tech furnishings. Decorated dining plus art
sales. Who killed the cat? Offer surprise menu items that guests won't know what they are
until the food arrives. Cats, catsup, the Catsup Supper Club--a burger place. The cat was
greased, hit--did the Mafia do it? Is the cat run over repeatedly? Build repeat business by
giving a free meal, drink, gift after nine (cat's lives) visits.

That's my list, and you can see that what Adams suggests is true: "One of the underlying
theories of creativity techniques is that wild ideas are valuable because the normal forces of
life will tend to convert them rapidly into practicality."
Final Example Problem: Get a friend who is behind in his payments to the store to catch up
and pay regularly.Trigger concept: PotatoIdeas: feed him, peel him, slice him up--divide his
payments into smaller pieces, as in every week, and send in the monthly payment made up
from that. fry him when he doesn't pay, plant him in the ground. salt him--give him some
"flavorful" incentive to pay, as in some gift or verbal reward. Baked potato, butter and sour
cream. Potato eyes--growth--convince him his credit rating will grow and be valuable to him
if he pays regularly.

Some useful questions to ask that will help you connect your trigger concept to
your idea include these:

A. How is the problem or idea like the trigger concept?

B. Does the problem have the trigger concept in it?

C. What does the concept do?

D. What is the concept like?

E. What is it not like?

F. What does the concept suggest?

4.9 Checklists
A checklist is a standard collection of items (things, verbs, questions, approaches, attributes)
used to remind the creative thinker of possible ways to approach a problem or shape a
solution. When running through a typical checklist, the creative thinker might ask, "Have I
taken this into account? How might I change or use this aspect? What effect will this attribute
have on my problem or solution or idea?"

Here are a few checklists, which you should supplement with your own customized ones,
developed for your particular problem, or the kind of work your do. You might also locate or
develop some additional general lists like these:

I. The Five Senses

1. Touch. Feeling, texture, pressure, temperature, vibration.

2. Taste. Flavor, sweet/salt/bitter.

3. Smell. Aroma, odor.

4. Sound. Hearing, speech, noise, music

5. Sight. Vision, brightness, color, movement, symbol.

II. Human Needs

1. Physical Comfort. Food, clothing, shelter, warmth, health.

2. Emotional Comfort. Safety, security, freedom from fear, love.

3. Social Comfort. Fellowship, friendship, group activity.

4. Psychological Comfort. Self-esteem, praise, recognition, power, self-determination, life

control.
5. Spiritual Comfort. Belief structure, cosmic organizing principle.
(Note: some needs cross boundaries. These include: pleasure, recreation, activity.)

III. Physical Attributes

1. Shape.

2. Color.

3. Texture.

4. Material.

5. Weight.

6. Hardness/Softness.

7. Flexibility.

8. Stability. (rolls, evaporates, decomposes, discolors, etc.)

9. Usefulness. (edible, tool, esthetic, etc.)

10. State. (powdered, melted, carved, painted, etc.)

IV. Aristotle's Categories
1. Substance or essence. What is it and what makes it unique or individual?

2. Quantity or magnitude. How many, how much, what degree?

3. Relation. Rank, comparison, derivation.

4. Quality. Value, attributes, shape, habits.

5. Action. What is it doing or does it do?

6. Affection. Reputation, attitudes toward.

7. Place. Where is it?

8. Time. When? (now? historical? future?)

9. Position. Sitting, standing, displayed, hidden

10. State. Planned, broken, untried, changing.

V. General Comments

Customized checklists should be developed for individual problems or ideas when several factors
must be considered. Listing each condition to be met or part to be covered will assure that none are
overlooked. The mind can attend to only about seven items at one time; more than that will have to be
recalled from memory, either by force of will or through a checklist. Checklists help enormously in
keeping the idea maker or problem solver alert to multiple aspects of the issue at hand.

A checklist of available tools used in your ordinary work can also be helpful. These lists might be
called availability reminders. An electrician might have a list (or even a board with samples) of the
various kinds of wires and fasteners available. A student might have a list of common reference tools,
outlining styles, and information storage methods (like writing, drawing, typing, voice and video
recording, model building, memorizing, and so forth). These checklists simply save the mental effort
required to bring up what's available when that list gets longer than six or seven.

Check Your Progress

1. From which field has the journalistic Six techniques been taken?
2. Which all questions need to be considered while using the journalistic six method?
3. How does the historical examination technique helps in brainstorming?
4. How does the attribute method work on a problem ?
5. How is morphological analysis based on the attribute analysis method of block
busting ?
6. What is a checklist?
7. What all can be listed in a checklist?
8. What is the use of checklist ?

4.10 SUMMARY
• You can think of creative solutions for your problem only when you know how to
look at a problem.
 • Creative thinking techniques teach you not only the way to handle problems, but also
the ways to generate ideas.
• the technique of brainstorming enables you to generate new ideas within a group . It
enhances your skill to think collectively in a group where the view point of other
group members are involved.
• In brainstorming you follow a certain set of guidelines and set of a specific duration
and work on problem in a group of three to ten members.
• The seconds technique of practical methodology provides you with methods to
organize ideas and members with in a group. It is based on the brainstorming
technique itself.
• Variation provide you two different ways of conducting brainstorming exercise.
• Ideas generating questions enables you to ask questions about each minute aspect of
the problem.
• When you start looking for the answer for these questions, it is impossible that you
miss to cover any aspect of the problem.
• Who, what, when, where, why and how when applied to a problem or idea helps to
reveal the true nature of the problem and you can easily derive a solution out of the
answers to these questions. Not only has creative thinking enabled you to find new
solution for your problems , it has also enabled you to improvise an existing solution
or idea.
• The historical examination technique when applied enables you to not only to
provide with an evolutionary approach but it also put you back to the revolutionary
mode by returning you to the origin and purpose of the idea .

• Some of us at some given period of time experiences blocking of ideas. Blocking of

ideas suggests that you are not being able to think creatively. the nine block busting
techniques, suggest the various methods of breaking the blocks of the mind. Once the
blocks tare removed, you are able to use your thinking and ideas generating skills
effectively.

4.11 KEY TERMS

• Analogy: A similarity between like features of two things, on which a comparison
may be based.
• Attribute: Something attributed as belonging to a person, thing, group, etc. ; a
quality, character, characteristic or property.
• Brainstorming: A sudden impulse, idea, etc.
• Manipulative: to adapt or change (accounts, figures, etc.) to suit one's purpose or
advantage.
• Metaphor: A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates
one thing is used to designate another, thus making implicit comparison.
 • Morphology: The study of the form or structure of anything
• Trigger: Anything as an act or event that serves as a stimulus and initiates or
precipitates a reaction or series of reactions.

4.12 QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

Short- Answer Questions

1. Name the three writers associated with the evolution of brainstorming.

2. What are the four rules of brainstorming?
3. What is the ideal number of members in a group for a brainstorming session?
4. What does a the practical methodology suggests?
5. Why is it important to keep a brainstorming session relaxed and playful?
6. Why is it essential to limit the brainstorming session for particular duration?
7. How do idea generating questions help in generating new ideas?
8. Explain the block busting technique in detail with examples.
9. How does a checklist help thinker ?
10. Give an example of checklist.
Long-Answer Questions

Explain in detail the process of brainstorming.

Explain the four principles of brainstorming with examples.

What are the different methods used in the practical methodology ?

Explain the role of a recorder in brainstorming session.

What is the method of variation all about?

Explain the two methods of implementing variations.

Explain the journalistic six questions with examples.

How is the historic examination technique different from Journalistic Six technique?
UNIT 5: TEACHING CREATIVITY

5.0 INTRODUCTION
The world needs more and more compassionate creativity to solve difficult problems
confronting us. Creative people do not have answers, but they habitually question the status
quo and think about alternatives and improvements. They discover and invent possible
answers. They habitually ask better questions. They have optimism. When combined with
empathy and compassion, creativity is bound to be a force for good.

Teaching creativity to everyone is vitally important if we desire a good life for all. Creativity
is typically seen as an inherited disposition. Many teachers and parents are not convinced that
creativity can be taught. They tell me that kids either have it or they don't. I disagree.
Creativity isseen in all kids with healthy brains. Teaching creativity beginning with the day of
birth or even sooner. Infants have natural ways to attract attention when they have needs.
They learn what works to satisfy hunger, thirst, comfort, affection, entertainment, and so on.
If we actively engage with an infant with baby talk and other forms of interplay, the child is
motivated to seek more engagement and enjoyment. The child begins to feel more
empowered and is more apt to adapt to seek new experiments and learning experiences.

In many cultures some families and most schools use a lot of negative behavior management.
If children grow up in a highly controlled environment with too many prohibitions, only a
small percentage of them manage to persistent and retain their natural creativity. Most of
their neurons and thinking habits that would have developed to make a creative mind have
been pruned. Their natural tendencies to be adventuresome, experimental, and creative
become suppressed. There may always be a very few highly creative who can resist the drill
and kill educational methods and the excessive prohibitions of controlling parents. Tragically,
the majority of children gives up and accommodate. They abandon their imaginative and
creative curiosity about life in favor of more secure, but imposed and programmed kind of
thinking habits. They accept answers from their instructors as correct. When this happens
many good ideas are missed. We risk injustice by manipulation. History is full of examples of
leaders who have gained followings and supporters based on very defective ideas. When the
masses are educated and creative, mass tragedy based on false fundamental beliefs systems is
less likely to take hold. Classrooms that insist on total conformity without asking for
independent ideas are likely to produce citizens who are best suited to cooperation with those
who seek to control in order to subjugate them. When only a few are creative, they are able to
impose too much control on those with learned helplessness.
5.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES
• Understand the impact of freedom on creativity
• Examine the effects of imitation on creativity.
• Identify the role of imitation in the creative process.
• Understand the relationship between imitation and skills.
• Explain the various ways of generating creative ideas.
• Define the role of skills in thinking and creativity.
• Understand the importance of creativity, drawing and talent in learning art.
• Determine the role of drawing in creativity.
• Define the role of self-assessment in creative teaching.

5.2 IMPACT OF FREEDOM ON

CREATIVITY
We are naturally creatures of habit. Our natural way to learn is by imitation. Students imitate
their own success and they imitate their peers. When allowed to do what we want to do, we
are likely to revert to whatever we previously found enjoyable and successful. Sad as that is,
the worst part is that the creative process is not being learned.

Limitations can be designed to require creativity. Requirements in an assignment are

limitations that force new solutions. They limit the realm in which one is allowed to operate,
making it easier to focus on a problem or an issue. We can find some useful teaching
strategies by looking at how artists generate ideas. What if every project, every assignment,
every task, and so on was limited to in the sense that nothing is allowed to be repeated unless
at least one thing is intentionally changed.

Many artists use a strategy called changing habits of work. When artists are feeling like
everything is becoming redundant and familiar, they can coax a new idea to the surface. An
artist might reverse the order of work, change the medium, change the scale, and forbid a
certain common component or common solution in the work. Reversing the order might be to
color in the negative space in a composition prior to adding color to the positive subject
matter. Teacher role is to encourage and reward the kinds of strategies and thinking habits
that are more apt to result in imagination and creativity rather than imitation and concurrence
with the status quo.

Students have the responsibility to learn to apply various creativity strategies and should
expect freedom to make some of the choices and take some of the risk involved when
changing strategies. They need practice in creative problem finding and solving. Teacher
should not be creative for the student. However, teacher can raise questions to produce
student self-awareness. Teacher can practice creative ways to nurture student creativity.
When students are stumped, teachers find that it is too easy for them to step in and suggest a
known or expected solution. This may not be good. Too many students quickly learn to wait
for the teacher's suggestion. Teacher feels that they can remind students of common lists of
ways to experiment, and so on, but they should not suggest final solutions. Even when only
suggesting solution strategies to try, they try to offer more than one option so the students
still need to make a choice.

Students need to feel ownership in their successes and failures. This being said, teacher needs
to allow students to make mistakes and encourage them to learn the strategies used to exploit
creative possibilities from unexpected outcomes. Mistakes and unexpected outcomes need to
be seen as gifts to our creative thinking. They represent a strategy used to find ideas that
would otherwise have never been discovered.

They need autonomy to make choices about what seems important. Without student choices
and ownership, the student's motivation to be creative is lost. Students who are too directed
feel put upon to do as they are told for some external reward, but they are bored and often
hate the process. It is not the teacher's role to provide the zinger suggestion, even when it
feels like an inspired idea. To do so robs the student of ownership as well as creative problem
solving experience.

In creative teaching, assignment limitations can provide a way to change the student's habits
of work. So long as the difficulty level is reasonable, new experiments can yield new
successes. A new approach is learned. When teacher have a student who complains that this
is a limitation, they have to explain the learning theory as the rationale for the limitations. If a
student persists, teacher also tells them that teacher can accept student proposals that violate
the limitations if they propose things that are reasonably creative and somewhat challenging.

Teacher often use introductory practice related to the new requirements. These warm-ups are
prescribed and not particularly creative. Teacher sees them as hands on ways to learn new
processes without resorting to a teacher demonstration to build skill and confidence without
showing examples. Usually teacher avoids examples because, like showing answers in
advance, it is most likely to reduce the need to practice creative thinking. Hands-on warm-ups
can include experiments that lead to self-discovered results.

5.3IMITATION IN CREATIVE PROCESS

Imitation is not a way to learn critical thinking. Imitation and copy work is not a way to foster
an innovative spirit in our students. Village children are given over to the care of slightly
older children. By imitating slightly older children, they learn to survive and thrive. Many of
us have experienced astounding successes by imitating a very successful example for an
assignment or task. There can be lots of natural success when we imitate successful
examples. This is why it is not surprised to see the popularity of copy work in art classes.
However, when we examine imitation as a learning form for today's world, it may be an
instinct that has become less appropriate in the changing environment we live in today. It is a
good way to learn traditional things, but is not a way to foster creativity. Imitation is not a
way to learn critical thinking. Imitation and copy work is not a way to foster an innovative
spirit in our students.

It is urgent in today's world that our students become critical thinkers with strong values.
Imitation as a learning style is very limited to accomplish this goal, and when I employ
imitation in teaching, I must point out its limitations and I need to supplement it immediately
with approaches that require innovation, problem solving, and a critical review process.

When we learn by imitation, we may become complacent. Not only do we simply produce
another one of those, we often fall into another one of those projects, lessons, or units of
instruction. We may say, If copy work works well for Chuck Close, who works from
photographs, it should work well for me and my students. Not all repetition and imitation is
bad, but repetition and imitation is certainly not creative on its own. Unfortunately, imitation
is very habit forming.

Many people, when faced with any kind quandary, immediately look for an expert to imitate,
to follow, or to copy. For us to Google answer before we make any personal effort does not
strengthen my problem solving neurons. In too many cases, student’s develop-solution
finding habits that lack confidence in their own problem solving ability. This tendency to
follow like sheep allows political leaders too much power to manipulate a majority of citizens
to accomplish their own ends. History is filled with tragic examples of populations that have
followed leaders because they had never learned to think through the ethics or the
consequences of scenarios they failed to imagine.

5.4 IMITATION AND SKILLS

Repetition has its merits for the sake of certain types of skills practice. However, we need to
be clear with ourselves when we are promoting skills practice. Skill alone is not fostering
creativity. Skills practice is very useful for the production of art, but skill by itself is not good
art. By skill practice, I would include such things as learning to do observational drawing or
raising a clay cylinder on the potter's wheel. Some art teachers use copy-work, obvious
imitation, because they think it develops skill. Imitation is instinctive and results in lots of
"monkey see - monkey do" learning, but does nothing to encourage or require creative
thinking. Imitation teaches other people's ideas and techniques. Imitation does not teach
much thinking.

If teacher want to use imitation to teach creativity, they must encourage the imitation of
creative thinking habits. This, by the way, is a great way to learn to stop other kinds of
imitation. This would be the best way to learn to stop imitating. Some of the methods that are
used in skills practicing are based on imitation are:

• Copy-work issues
• Image flooding issues
• Teaching without image flooding

COPY-WORK ISSUES

Copy-work is very common in some high school art classes. I have not met many art
teachers that claimed they were teaching creativity when they had students busily copying
pictures from magazines, although some claim the students are being creative because they
are required to make some sort of modification. Copy-work is often rationalized because it
appears to be building skill. Furthermore, many students are enjoying it.

Copy-work is a form of artistic self-poisoning addiction. It develops dependency because the

student notices that their other work looks inferior to their copy-work. Copy-work becomes a
"feel good" addiction because is requires less effort than working form real observation or
experience. The main skill being learned is, how to copy. Very little thinking is required and
few real skills are learned. The part of the brain used for copy-work is probably not the same
as the part of the brain used to render a drawing from a real object or person. It is one step
removed from being a passive spectator. The term "couch potato artist" comes to mind.

Copy-work is very common as a learning method among self-taught artists. Their definition
of art is somewhat simplistic. They are seduced by the look of art and do not understand the
creative aspects of the process. They are producing within a very limited realm. To them, if it
looks like art, it must be art. Untutored artists do not notice their own mistakes. They may
feel that there are mistakes, but they cannot identify the mistakes. As a result, their work may
be charming, naive, and quaint. It often looks creative by default. When these artists start
working with a teacher their artwork often appears to get worse and worse. Many get totally
frustrated and turn away from their "art". When they are taught to recognize their mistakes
they lose the joy.

Creativity is facilitated by the observational skill and the continual need to find ways
to transform and express what is being observed. Confidence is achieved.
Repeated practice is essential to learn skills. Practice makes things easier, builds confidence,
and enhances quality. Similarly, review is essential to learn facts like artist names, the look of
their style, vocabulary about art, and so on. These are important aspects of learning art, but
they are not as useful in today's world as the ability to be critically aware, inspired,
innovative, and responsive problem solvers. It may be gratifying and entertaining to reach a
virtuoso level of performance, but without critical thinking and creative strategizing, it is a
hollow victory. Yes, in every area of expertise (not just art) most of the best examples of
great creativity do come from those who have achieved knowledge and skill in the area, but
skill and knowledge alone are not creative. Somehow, great minds must become experts
while retaining and developing their creativity along with their knowledge and skill.

IMAGE FLOODING ISSUES

Showing many examples at the beginning of an art lesson is called "image flooding". In
theory, image flooding shows many good examples in fairly rapid succession. Typically, the
images come from the teacher's collection of previous years' student work, from art books,
slide collections, reproductions, the Internet, and so on. Teachers depend on the theory that
students do not have time to take in enough information to copy. However, sometimes the
examples are posted in the room as reference materials to help focus the students on the
assignment. Additionally, many teachers, knowing that art is also supposed to be creative,
tell the students not imitate or copy any of these works. They are careful to explain that they
are showing examples to clarify the assignment, but not to be copied. On the surface, this
seems like good teaching. These teachers often get excellent evaluations from their students
and their students do fairly well in contests. Students like it because they can see what is
expected and image flooding gets decent predictable products.

There are several issues with image flooding. Firstly, some art teachers have become quite
addicted to this seemingly natural way to show the look of the expected outcomes. Yet when
pressed, they cannot explain any real rationale for the assignment. They cannot define the
problems being presented. They are inarticulate. They may even say, art is non-
verbal. However, teaching art is very verbal. Langer is extremely verbal. Yet, teachers who
fail to explain verbally what they are attempting to teach still think of themselves as art
teachers, but fostering creativity is hard to do unless the teacher understands the nature of
artistic creativity well enough to be articulate about it. Therefore, teachers that use image
flooding as a substitute for the clear articulation of issues and concepts will seldom succeed
in fostering creativity. The nature of imitation is too powerful as an instinct, and too much
the opposite of creativity. The instinct to imitate can easily overcome our instinct to imagine
which can take a lot more effort.

The second issue with image flooding is the lack of creative integrity that is fostered in the
learner. The student through their work wants to make their teacher realize that their work is
original. This teaches me to borrow and recombine things in devious ways so nobody will
recognize who I am mimicking. In true creativity I would have to bring something into the
mix from my own life experience. Image flooding does not require this and does not foster
this. Image flooding shows me examples from other lives so I need not bother with my own
life. In the end the art is also less mine and more others. True creativity happens when
intuitive imagination brings forth the previously unknown and unimagined. Clever
combinations of imitated ideas might look creative.

The third issue with image flooding is that students who might otherwise be naturally creative
will find it much harder to access their own rich store of subconscious experiential store of
experiences and ideas. Even highly creative students can be insecure and very suggestive.
Once we can see an image or an idea, it starts to cover up our own ideas that were trying to
emerge. These outside images from other artists become insistent tunes impossible to shake.
In this way image flooding actually drowns individual creativity before it has a chance to
swim on its own.

TEACHING WITHOUT IMAGE FLOODING

An art teacher, now get to teach art. Part of teaching or learning art is learning the art of idea
development, enhancement, and truth finding. When students are given instruction in idea
development teacher do not have to show them examples from famous artists, teacher do not
have to ask them to reinvent or cleverly disguise things that others have done - to make
another one of those. They can take real life experiences from their own lives. Teachers can
encourage them to develop these into art forms.

Once students tackle an assignment creatively, they will naturally be curious to see what
others have done related to the problem they have struggled to solve. When studying a
master, they will not only be interested in seeing the end product, but they will be open to
learn about the master's creative methods. One not only studies the look of the work, but tries
to figure out why the artist did it that way. In this kind of problem solving, students find
historical evidence from research to confirm ideas about the creative methods used. If one
wants to foster student creativity, one can teach the art history as review and reinforcement of
the art lesson, not as a pattern for the art lesson. The creative work happens first. The related
history is studied after the personal creative work.

Teacher can also teach art history as a discrete body of knowledge without using it as
example work for a particular creative problem. While this may not directly practice
creativity, it still gives students knowledge about and appreciation for the creativity of other
artists. It may still provide good information about creative processes and methods used by
artists to achieve the artworks we are studying.

CHECK FOR PROCESS

1. Which is the most common and natural way of learning new things?
2. Why is it advisable not to give students too much freedom of creativity?
3. What are the limitations that help in starting the creative impulse of students?
4. Why copy work is unsuitable for today’s learning structure?
5. Why is it important to provide students with strong values?
6. How imitation does becomes a habit with students?
7. Give an example for daily life of inability to think creatively?

5.5 WAYS TO GENERATE CREATIVE

IDEAS
Teacher is forced to think and articulate ideas and assignment goals better. As a teacher the
practice sessions give methods used by creative people to develop their ideas and need to
explain goals in terms the students can understand. Rubrics need to be different for creative
work than for work based primarily on technical skills.

Creatively productive people use a number of methods.The methods are:-

• Make lists and sketches

• Consider opposites
• Consider practice
• Direct involvement with materials and processes
• Thinking process rather than product
• Consider assessment and grading paradigms
• Consider the tone and nature of responses to student ideas
• Consider the familiar - avoid exotic content
• Consider answering questions with questions
• Consider answering questions with questions about experimentation
MAKE LISTS AND SKETCHES

Many make lists and sketches of possibilities. As an artist drawing is a way to “develop” an
idea or solve a problem. I believe students can learn to do it also. Students should do focused
"playing around" with an idea. Visually creative people use thumbnail sketches as their lists.
These lists and sketches are extensive and often include options that are directly the opposite
of a conventional solution. Students who can quickly make long lists are fluency
gifted. Students who can make lists with items that are unique and unlike those of other
students are gifted in flexibility. Sometimes we see who in my class has the most ideas that
are not listed by anybody else. Giving them honorable mention points is a way to encourage
them. Highly creative individuals keep tinkering with the ideas in their lists and sketches.
Fine tuning is encouraged.

When teacher give an assignment that starts with list making, teacher should work on them
first work individually. Then teacher might ask them to form groups of three or
four. Generally, teacher tries to use grouping criteria to get as much diversity of skill, interest,
and background as possible in each group. Using a group of diverse experts is known as
synectics. Students may not be experts, but they are each encouraged to contribute from their
unique experiences. Usually teacher wants them each to present their ideas to the group and
ask for help adding features, new ideas, and so on and want them to take each other’s listed
ideas and add them to their own ideas to see if still more or better ideas develop. In today's
world, most tasks require complex solutions that only collaborative efforts can
achieve. Beginning in elementary grades students can learn to be collaboratively creative
learners and teachers of each other.

After significant effort to get long lists, fine-tuned ideas, and so on, they are asked to rank all
ideas according to several criteria. Criteria depend on the project, but they might sort them
from innovative to common, from simple to complex, from beautiful to ugly, from useful to
non-functional, from durable to temporary, from precious to cheap, and so on.

CONSIDER OPPOSITES

Research shows that highly creative people mention more opposites when taking a free
association word test. This tells us that they have learned not waste time with the
conventional solutions. They find successes when they look at things upside down, inside out,
and from back to front. To understand beauty, it helps to experience ugly.

CONSIDER PRACTICE

Build in lesson time to practice with materials so that beginning mistakes are not mistaken for
creative ideas. Comfort and some mastery of processes and materials allows for more creative
rendition of new ideas. Artists often find inspiration as they start manipulating the materials.
It is natural to get visual ideas as we work with visual materials. Picasso said something to
the effect that art is two percent inspiration - not knowing when inspiration would occur, it
was important for him to be in the studio working. These lines can actually be very inspiring
for true artist.

DIRECT INVOLVEMENT WITH MATERIALS AND PROCESSS

Practice with materials may lead directly to a creative final product. This is one of the
methods of creating art for many artists. Many artists do not believe in preplanning. They are
inspired the process itself. The enjoy interacting with the materials and the visual and tactile
experiences that emerge as they work. This approach is especially appropriate for certain
styles like abstract expressionism where the action of material manipulation is often a major
portion of the content and concept of the work.

THINKING PROCESS RATHER THAN PRODUCT

When we show an end product in order to help explain something, we risk bypassing
creatively. We may want students to be creative, but by our actions they believe we care more
about the product than whether they learn how to think creatively. We cannot expect students
to think creatively when we ourselves are showing them just the final answers. We should
familiarize them with problems rather than their answers.There are many ways to present
problems without showing answers.

Color mixing can be used as creativity practice by asking students to experiment with colors.
They can be led to discover how to combine colors to form new colors. It can be learned as a
problem finding and problem solving process. Teachers post a color chart in the classroom to
show how colors are made. Posting the answer cannot be expected give students the
impression that creative thinking is expected.To teach the creative process, teacher must
avoid posting charts that gives answer unless the students themselves have invented the
charts. Teacher should ask students to do experiments to figure out how to mix a color that
will match a color that they select on a spot on a still life object has been placed on a table in
the room.

Teachers can use the objects from the garden or produce markets that have colors unlike any
of the student's paints. Their paints for this might include only primaries and neutrals. Their
questions and experiments need to consider hue, value, intensity, lighting, color temperature,
and so on. As in math, you could ask them to show their work not just an answer based on
one guess. False starts and incorrect guesses are okay, but not an end-point. Real experiments
often result in wrong answers at first. Each step might include a note about how it was done.
In the end, a small color chip can be attached to the actual still life to see if it appears to blend
in or disappear. Unlike math, there are many ways to approach this problem. When math is
involved in an art project, Teachers likes to see the same answer derived in at least two
ways. This not only encourages creative thinking, it improves accuracy.

In a reverse of the above color matching process problem, students could experiment to
create the most contrasting color to use as the background color. Now the end product
becomes more subjective and individualized. Colors have different kinds of contrasts
including hue, tone, temperature, and saturation. With an open option for how to produce
contrast, students will make discoveries in some proportion to how much experimentation
they are willing to do and how advanced and aware they have become.

CONSIDER ASSESSMENT AND GRADING PARADIGMS

Openly reward unusual and innovative work. Even when it is crude, teacher tries to
acknowledge the innovative part of student work. If teacher want creativity, they have to be a
bit stingy with high grades for derivative work just because it is skilful and has a professional
look without any originality. Neatness is a style that may or may not be appropriate.
Similarly, following directions may be important, but some of the most creative outcomes are
produced by perceptive creativity that can see that some rules are less important than a good
solution. Most of the greatest scientists and many of the greatest artists are those that found
established rules to be wrong. Boundary breaking and boundary stretching can be types of
productive creativity that emerge when the traditional boundaries are part of the cause of the
problem.

Teachers can develop more games, assignments, and even tests that give points for unique
response. Bonus points could be given for high quality, beauty, expressiveness, usefulness,
artistic importance, correctness, truthfulness, and whatever else is deemed important.
Teachers need to stop giving so much credit for redundant facts that everybody already
knows.

CONSIDER THE TONE AND NATURE OF RESPONSES TO STUDENT IDEAS

Students often need encouragement and reassurance. They get ideas and begin to doubt their
own ideas. Students who ask about a new idea need encouragement. To avoid failure they
would simply ask for the new ideas. The teacher should encourage students using right
method as well as give them a chance and try out their own idea with confidence. If it doesn't
work student will still learn from it and may even get a better idea. Teacher might offer a
story about a similar option or a variation on their idea that can be used for comparison, but
generally it is best to get them to follow their own hunches.

CONSIDER THE FAMILIAR - AVIOD EXOTIC CONTENT

Use common everyday experiences and issues that students are very familiar with as subjects
for assignments. Familiar content allows for more challenging artistic processes. Exotic or
strange content promotes more copy work of references because students are forced to use
pre-existing pictures instead of direct experience and observations. The ideas that grow out of
experiences can be substantially more meaningful. Experiences are different for every
student. Each student has unique family rituals, customs, heritage, favorite foods, games,
pets, etc. Creativity flourishes when we are intimately acquainted with our content. Most
creative work happens when one open to one’s immediate surroundings.
CONSIDER ANSWERING QUESTIONS WITH QUESTIONS

Many students come to the art teacher and ask for suggestions related to their work. In such
cases, teachers should avoid becoming as one who “knows it all”. Art is a search. Art with
integrity grows from an honest search. Teachers should not take ownership of the student's
artwork. Rather, teacher asks some thinking questions. Students will become more creative if
they can feel they are the true owners of their work. Teachers can even hope that students will
learn how these questions are formulated and by looking for the answers they would be able
to get more creative ideas.

CONSIDER ANSWERING QUESTIONS WITH QUESTIONS ABOUT EXPERIMENTATION

Art and science have many commonalities, but we often fail to use is probably the most basic
and important of all - the scientific method. The scientific method says that questions must
be answered experimentally with results that are repeatable. Art students have often asked
you to give them a suggestion to improve a work in progress. Many times your ego and your
pompous personality have simply prompted you to blurt out an answer. Rather, you been
thinking scientifically about teaching creativity, you might have ask the student to design a
small experiment relating to something that noticed. The scientific method takes more time
in the short run, but if a student learns that they can design experiments to solve their own
problems they have learned not only the scientific method but have learned one of the
important components of artistic thinking and artistic behavior. Ultimately students have
learned to figure out how to answer their own questions. Students are empowered and
creative.
5.6 SKILLS AS A PREREQUISITE TO
THINKING AND CREATIVITY
Many teachers have argued that skills and knowledge are essential prerequisites for the
production of art. This belief leads to lots of another one of those art assignments with no
requirement for innovation. I believe it is much better to include both innovation criteria as
well as skill and knowledge criteria. This can sometimes be done concurrently and sometime
alternately. It may be helpful if teachers and students become more aware of what is working
at rehearsal and when they are being asked to perform creatively. Both are important, so one
and the other should not be an excuse for ignoring the other. Most four and five year olds are
naturally creative, but very immature in their skills development. At this age we all
understand that it would be ludicrous for us to insist that they be proficient in skill before
they are allowed to be expressive.

Art teachers are of different minds as what is needed when children begin to notice that they
have little or no drawing ability. Instead of helping students learn to look more closely at
their worlds, they devalue learning to observe. They give art assignments that look like art,
but require no particular ability. They imitate, they copy, and theyfollow step-by-step
assembly instructions, and so on. Along the same lines, some art teachers show formulas
from books on how to draw a tree, a face, or a human figure. These methods do not teaching
drawing competency. They teach dependency. Few children complain because they naturally
enjoy imitation and they are mildly rewarded by pretty products. There is no way for them to
know that good art teaching could help them with methods that actually teach them how they
could learn to draw anything by helping them practice standard observations methods. Of
course art and creativity are more than drawing. Art includes many complex questions related
to compositional awareness, expressive quality, evocative images, implications and
connotations.

5.7 CREATIVITY, DRAWING AND

TALENT
Too many children as well as adults confuse drawing and creativity. Many people with a poor
self-image in regard to drawing also feel that they are not artistic. They feel they are not
talented. They might also feel they are not creative. Being able to draw does not
automatically make one creative and does not make one an artist any more than the ability to
use a camera makes a photographer into an artist. Drawing is a skill. Drawing, just like
photography can be done artistically and it can be done creatively, but not all drawing is art
and not all drawing is creative. So while there is a close connection between drawing, art, and
creativity, it is not always connected.

The ability to draw a likeness may seem to be a natural gift or talent for some, but it is
actually acquired by practice. Like anything else, some acquire this skill faster and easier than
others, but everybody learns it through practice. Nearly everybody can learn to play piano
with a good teacher and faithful practice. Nearly everybody can learn to read and write with a
good teacher and with faithful practice. The same is true for drawing. These are skills that are
easier for some and harder for others. The ones who learn easier and without a teacher in our
culture are thought to be talented, but they still learn by practice. Drawing is not dependent
on talent, but for many, drawing is dependent on knowing how drawing is learned. Practice
does make it easier.

Natural propensity is not essential for drawing any more than it is for reading. Many
elementary classroom teachers, if asked by a child for help with a drawing, will be guide as
not to worry about it even they can't draw either. In our culture we have become absolutely
dependent on reading, but only marginally dependent on the ability to draw. This cultural bias
that fails to see the basic need to learn drawing helps produce substandard creative thinking
ability in the general population. All the teachers must understand the important role played
by the skills of drawing. It is not about being able to draw or create various art pieces; rather
it is about developing the creative ability. Such skills enhance the creative thinking ability
amongst students. Hence it is important that they develop this habit of thinking creatively in
their initial years of schooling itself. Hence, teachers play a vital role in making students
understand and inculcate drawing skills.
 CHECK FOR PROGRESS
1. What does the making list and sketches technique of generating new idea
suggest?
2. What is the most important factor to be taken care of when implementing
the technique of making list and sketches?
3. What do you understand by the term synaptic?
4. How can you incorporate the criteria of innovation along with those of
skills and knowledge?
5. Why is it important for a teacher to differentiate between the rehearsal and
the final performance?
6. Why should a teacher not use methods such as showing formula books to
the students on the methods of drawing?
7. Give an example of the considering opposite method of generating new
ideas.

5.8 DRAWING AND CREATIVITY

Person can survive without knowing how to read, but reading is extremely helpful. You can
be creative without knowing how to draw, but drawing is extremely helpful when doing
creative work. Researchers have found that careful visual observation drawing is done in the
parts of the brain where intuitive and creative thinking occurs. Rational thinking, on the other
hand, happens in parts of the brain where the trite schematic drawings are stored in the brain.
This may indicate that observation drawing practice develops the intuitive part of the brain.
This may be true, but if not, there are other basic reasons to learn drawing in order to be more
creative.

Drawing is an extremely useful, if not essential tool used in creative thinking. Drawing is
very helpful to most students and adults in the development of all kinds of creative ideas and
in problem solving. Imagination means visualization. Learning to draw develops the portion
of the brain that visualizes. Visualizing is used in all kinds of creative planning activities
including charting, graphing, mapping, planning structures, planning communities, and
design of every kind. Creative workers employ drawing and visualization to check out many
scenarios before they make decisions.

While planning a creative project, drawings are constantly being modified and refined.
Creative planners have learned to expect the drawing process to bring out many new ideas
that would have been missed otherwise. Drawings allow creative collaborations with non-
drawing participants whose creativity is facilitated by the drawings. Drawing for a creative
worker is a dynamic conversation with the plan and the other stakeholders. The drawing talks
to the designers and the designers respond with new variations until the best possible
outcome is realized.

Drawing is not merely a medium of creative planning. For any artist it is the immediate,
expressive, and vital drawing medium, drawing on paper can also be a vital, expressive, and
creative end product. When art teachers teach children how to learn observation drawing,
they are facilitating creative thinking in many other areas of their lives. When we teach
expressive drawing, we are engaged in actual creative thinking and acting. Children need to
learn both. Every scribbling child is being expressive almost without knowing it. Observation
skill practice can begin fairly young, and at least by grade one. Expressive work should also
continue to be nurtured.

Without deliberate drawing instruction, only a small percentage of children learn to draw
because most children lack the instinct to keep drawing on their own as soon as their critical
sensitivities outpace their observation drawing skills. Only a few people would learn to read
and write without teachers. Most would give up without teachers or parents to coach this
learning. In such a culture, we might say they that most people lack the talent to read and
write. That in fact is the culture we now have in many communities in regard to observation
drawing. Children do not learn how to learn drawing because they do not have art teachers or
they have art teachers who do not know how to teach drawing. In the US about 40 percent of
the elementary schools do not have art teachers. This important mind development is missed
and much creativity is missed when this tool is abandoned during our development.

Art teachers need to help children begin to make visual comparisons and represent them in
their drawings. I use lots of open questions that remind children to observe more carefully. I
do not draw in front of the students because it encourages them to copy my drawing and they
still do not learn to observe. I go over to the thing being observed and carefully point out how
to notice things. I ask them to practice drawing in the air while observing before committing
pencil to paper. Students are asked to notice contour, size, texture, value gradations,
proportions, and every kind of relationship in the thing, person, or animal observed. I ask
them to use a pencil at arm's length as a sighting device to compare sizes, angles, and so on. I
often encourage the use of touch, and include smell, taste, and sound as motivation and when
experiencing the world. I avoid copy work, formulas, and drawing tricks. I do not give
answers, but encourage experimentation and exploration to find answers. I provide aides to
observation including viewfinders to frame compositions and pencil blinders to hide the
paper and encourage looking at the thing being observed. When mistakes are obvious to the
student, I encourage another line before erasing the mistake. Sometimes three or four tries are
needed, but this is learning. The purpose of practice is to make it easy and to make it better.

Drawing is learned with regular practice. A few minutes of drawing practice time becomes
aclassroom ritual for every art class session. Art is much more than drawing, but there is
probably nothing more basic than drawing. Observation and expressive drawing are the
descriptive and expressive reading and writing of the brain's visual development. The brain's
visual development is basic to the brain's facility to imagine, to do visual scenario making,
and to be creative. Therefore, teaching observation and expressive drawing is a basic part of
teaching creativity.

Drawing is but one part of art. But even in drawing, creative art teachers realize that drawing
is not a series of learned rules about standard subject matter. Much of good drawing is
actually the product of seeing and observational ability. It is a mental acuity learned through
practice. Instead of learning rules, copying standard images and proportions, students need to
be shown how artists actually look at their world and the things, animals, and people in it.
Teachers need to walk over to the thing being observed andexplain how to look at itnot
show some standard way that it should look in a drawing. I do not demonstrate drawing
because I do not want students to learn to copy my drawing. I go the thing being drawn and
move my finger according to the way I see the thing. I show how to measure to get honest
proportions from observations not from other people's pictures. Drawing is learned by
learning to observe proportions by visually measuring from actual people, animals and
objects not by copying pictures that other observers have created. Drawing is learned
by noticing tonal changes as lighting changes. Drawing is learned bylearning to see the
relative size, clarity, and brightness of near and distant objects.

Expressive drawing, painting, sculpture, and so on grows out of intense and extensive
experimentation with materials and processes, by working slowly and deliberately, by
working fast and spontaneously, by combining the methods, and then attending to the results,
not by learning any rules of drawing. Imaginative drawing is learned by making many lists
or thumbnail sketches of ideas that grow out of experiences not by copying another artist's
surrealistic images. Creativity is learned when learners find out that their risks bring rewards.
Formulas imply a safe answer. They encourage sticking with safe systems rather than taking
the risk to learn how to learn a new ability.

Observation drawing is apparently seen as optional for those who enjoy it. Too many
children shy away from art or find little joy in it because they suffer under the illusion that
they are not talented. This is because they have never been exposed to a few simple methods
used to practice observation drawing and overcome their childish methods of rendition.
Observation drawing teaches us that we can truly trust the truth of our own observations more
than what others tell us about truth.

LEARNING DRAWIG FROM MEMORY AND EXPERIENCE

Preschool children, who have progressed beyond the scribbling stage, nearly always draw
from their experiences. Teachers and parents can encourage and enrich creative self-
expression and creative thinking habits of young children by asking them relevant open
questions while they are drawing. If we want to encourage creative thinking, these kinds of
questions never suggest or dictate, but they help and encourage children to think of more
ideas to include in their work. More of what they know becomes visible in their drawings.
The work is also more creative and richer when the experiences themselves have been
enriched. The enriched experiences are easily seen in pieces of art composed. To understand
the impact of experience in drawing, let us consider example, if a child has visited a zoo with
a caregiver who actively discusses the animals with the child, she is apt to make much more
creative artwork related to this experience than another child who visited the same zoo with a
passive caregiver. Hence, experience plays a significant role in drawing.

LEARNING DRAWING FROM IMAGINATION

Young children have a strong instinct to imagine which seems to decrease rapidly as they go
through school. We cannot say for certain why the imagination seems to decrease so much as
children age. We do believe that constant pressure to have come up with one right answer, to
copy things in workbooks, color in other people's pictures, and similar activities all conspire
to discourage creative and imaginative divergent thinking and problems solving. Learning of
experiment with art materials in order to see how they create their effects is a good way to
encourage creative and imaginative thinking and counteract some of the stultifying influences
of becoming cultured and trained to conform.

Drawing and other artwork is inspired by three sources that enhance our creativity. They are
observation, experience, and imagination. Lessons that are based on rules, copy work,
examples, and demonstrations are less apt to encourage creativity. This is not to say that there
are constraints. Good teaching has many constraints and limitations in order focus thinking
and ensures creativity.

TEACHING ART THROUGH VISUAL ELEMENTS AND PRICIPLES OF COMPOSITION

Some teachers feel that the visual elements and the principles of design are the basic structure
of art. It is thought that if we teach the basic structure, art will happen. That was a modern art
idea developed during the 1930's. To the surprise of such teachers, art has turned out to be a
bit messier than that. I do believe the elements and principles still have some utility for
artists. However, they are too limiting and simplistic. They fail to acknowledge content,
symbol, meaning, and untraditional ways of being artistic. Every artwork is different and
there is no simple system that covers everything not yet imagined. If there are any final
equations, computer programs, verbal pronouncements, or whatever, that give a final
definition to art we will have witnessed the final implosion of truth, beauty, and imagination.

In the meantime, there is little harm in working at definitions and tentative rules so long as
we also agree to live with uncertainty and change. Rather than teaching the elements and
principles as predetermined truth, a teacher interested in fostering creative thinking might be
well advised to ask students to experiment in ways they might postulate and arrive at
compositional principles on their own. Just as education is better when we learn invention
than how to make previously invented products, it is better to learn principle finding and
verification rather than learning principles determined by dead experts at another time and
place. It is very creative to ask students to define a set of principles that can be used to assess
their own work. It is creative to ask students to figure out how the old standard elements and
principles might have been determined. As in life, if there are rules, they are more likely to be
things like pay attention, make comparisons, verify, be skeptical, look before you leap, and so
on. The traditional design principles can guide, but not determine the process, and they
certainly do not determine the art product.

TEACHING CREATIVITY BY GIVING TIME FOR THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Artist spends lots of time contemplating next projects, sometimes months or years before
doing the project. Some sketching is a good way to focus the issues and get this process
started. Additionally, much of this brain work seems to be subliminal. My mind can be
working on things behind the scenes. Every part of daily experience has potential for an art
project. This kind of homework is no work. When I actually start working I have gathered
lots of new insights, some recorded and some without knowing it. As an artist, I am not
merely a knowledge worker, but a mind worker. It is not merely what I know; it is what I can
now do with what I know.

In organizing the sequence of mind training and creativity training lessons, are there ways to
ritualize and focus advance preparation, discussions, questions, and sketching sessions that
promote thinking, looking, more sketching, dreaming, and idea development for lessons that
are coming in the future. Are there ways to encourage and reward the keeping track of art
ideas that come to mind at unexpected times? Good teachers prepare their students so that
when their students leave the classroom their minds are prepared for homework that is no
work. They expect to get ideas at unexpected times. This is homework that is no work in the
traditional sense. Good teachers understand the surreal powers of subconscious minds, of
imagination, and of creative thinking habits.

The creative process includes

• Preparation
• Incubation
• Insight
• Elaboration
• Evaluation

All the steps mentioned above are equally important for the students of art to understand.
Even the teachers should base their teaching on these steps of creative process.Teachers often
get tempted to use shortcuts such as showing examples of other art to get quick inspiration
and information as a substitute for relevant self-referential thinking. These artistic challenges
should be able to provide students the courage to develop and express their own ideas.

This takes time. It means practice sessions, question session, and list making rituals.This
means setting aside time that is days or weeks in advance of the actual production to get
students focused and thinking. It means programming their minds to do the subconscious
incubation homework that helps bring insight to the table when the production starts. We
know that homework works best when we develop rituals of accountability and when we
make a point of rewarding successes. You must be wondering, what are the classroom rituals
that give credit and honour to the students when they show evidence of subliminal ideas that
have been recorded and brought to class and infused in their creative work? Also how often
do we take class time to investigate the sources of our own creative ideas?

5.9 SELF ASSESSMENT AS CREATIVE

TEACHING
Most of the teacher teaches one or another of those lessons to students. But they still are in
process of learning how to teach. As a creative teacher, it is my responsibility to review the
results of a lesson or a unit. While assessing the results, teacher includes alternative ways of
teaching a similar lesson. These new methods should be recorded for the next sessions so that
they can be implemented for next year. A creative teacher needs a good system to record
ideas for next year. This can be only done by the virtue of critical review of your own
teaching.
It is fairly easy for apprentice teachers to learn by imitating their model teachers. However,
creative teachers go beyond imitating their role models. They go beyond their mentors. They
do this by virtue of critical review of their own teaching by carefully reviewing what happens
and then searching for alternative things to try.

Creative teachers make mistakes, but they also search for ways to overcome mistakes. Each
time they try something, they review the outcomes and try to imagine ways to make
improvements. Some are uncreative teacher; it may be because they do not feel that they
make mistakes. They know they are teaching in the same wayas they were taught. So their
instinct to imitate says them that they are doing okay. These teachers never think about
improvising their teaching methods. They would blame students for the bad outcomes. They
believe that they should not be held responsible for an unmotivated or mentally challenged
student. If teacher tend to make excuses for what should be changed in my teaching, then it is
not a creative teacher. On the other hand, if teacher have a habit of looking for new
alternative methods, then teacher likely to be a creative teacher.

CHECK YOUR PROCESS

1. What type of information is stored in the left hemisphere of the brain?
2. The practice of which creative skills helps in developing the intuitive part of the
brain?
3. List three uses of drawing for students?
4. How can you do a critical review of your own teaching?
5.10 SUMMARY
• Talent plays a limited role in developing creativity and skills of drawing.
These two characteristics can be easily developed through practice.
• You learnt how observation drawing helps in developing the intuitive part of the brain
• You also examined the various reasons to learn how to draw in order to become
creative.
• Imitation can be one of the methods to learn creativity. It plays an important role in
developing the skills of creativity. When student try to imitate something, they make
use of their observational skills.
• Methods such as copy work, image flooding, without image flooding helps in
practicing skills and are based on imitation.
• In this unit you also learnt the importance and drawback of these methods
• To incorporate creativity in our work, it is essential to learn the different ways to
generate creative ideas. Making lists, considering opposites, practice, assessment,
grading paradigms, tone and nature of response to student’s ideas are a few methods
you learnt to generate creative ideas.
• Self-assessment is another important method to teach creativity.

5.11 KEY TERMS

• Creativity: The ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, pattern, relationships, or
the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations,
originality, progressiveness, or imagination.
• Imitation: To follow or endeavor to follow as model or example or to make a copy of
or reproduce closely
• Prerequisites: Required or necessary as a prior condition.
• Problem-solving: The thought processes involved in solving a problem.
• Synectics: The study of creative processes as applied to the solution of problems by a
group of diverse individuals.
•

5.12 QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

SHORT-ANSWER QUESTIONS

• List the limitations that can be applied to generate new creative ideas.
• Why is imitation considered to be harmful for creativity?
• List the various methods you studied in the unit for generating new and creative ideas.
• Give an example to show skills as prerequisites to thinking and creativity.
 • Why is it important to be able to draw? Explain.
• What is observational drawing?
• Why is self-assessment important for an art teacher?

LONG-ANSWER QUESTIONS

• Explain the impact of freedom on creativity?

• List and explain the methods which are used in skills practicing and are based on
imitation.
• Compare and contrast the drawback of teaching with image flooding and teaching
without image flooding.
• How does observation drawing help in promoting creativity?
UNIT 6 DESIGN METHODS
Structure
6.0 Introduction

6.1 Unit objectives

6.2 Background of design methods

6.3 Formalization of design methods

6.4 Design management

6.5 Proliferation of information technology

6.6 Significance of proliferation of information technology

6.7 Design planning

6.8 Summary

6.9 Key terms

6.10 Exercises and questions

6.11 Further reading

6.0 INTRODUCTION
To you, the term design method might seem a step - by - step sequence of a process to
perform a certain task. However, it describes a goal - directed process of flexible
improvisation. It is not a rigid step - by - step choreographed sequence. Since 1962, when the
design method actually started gaining popularity, it has undergone many major changes in
its definition and application. It is used as a tool to solve complex problems. In this unit, you
will learn about the background of design methods and its impact on the current definition
and use in business situations. Along with the history of design methods, you will also learn
the features of design research that played major role in definition the process for design
methods.

After the design method were equipped with the required processes and applications, there
emerge the need for formalization design methods. The topic design management analyses
the various factors responsible for managing design in an effective way. Information
technology has played an important role in design methods. The growth of the internet and
computer technology has directly influenced the growth of design methods. This unit will
enable you to learn this relationship between information technology and design method and
its significance. The topic on design planning focuses on the current structuring of design
method and discusses the factors affecting design planning.

6.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES

After going through this unit, you will be able to:

• Understand the background of design methods

• Identify the factors influencing the formalization of design methods
• Explain design management
• Understand the impact and significance of information technologies on design
methods
• Understand the design planning to implement the design methods

6.2 BACKGROUND OF DESIGN METHOD

The world has been undergoing rapid changes in all the fields for past few years now. The
beginning and the end of every centaury highlights these changes are considerable. Similarly,
the late 19th and 20th centaury brought about many changes. These changes were not limited
to any specific area. All social politic and economic development made during this period put
into motion specific ant modern benefit for leaving and working. Fig. 6.1 Shows various
factors such as people culture trends and social changes which created the ideal situations for
innovative ideas to play their role.

Fig 6.1 various factors that create situation for innovation

But along with the benefits there are some constant which caused by the industrial technology
break through associated with this period. These development create social and economical
complex for people and their environment. Although the problem solving techniques already
existed during this time, there were based on traditional methods of making art facts. But
discipline such as architecture engineering and product development an urban planning in late
19 and 20 centaury had to tackle new type of problem solving. The problem face during with
these periods needed systematic and innovative techniques. To tackle this problem from
initial level itself, more affords have to put in designing phase as a result more information
and a methodical approach to design became the need of the art. A conference on 'Systematic
and intuitive methods in engineering industrial design, architecture and communication as
organized by john Christ Jones and Peter Slann in 1962. The team designing method has its
origins in this conference and was originally drawn from it. In collaboration with engineers,
John advocated ergonomics. He also advocated the consideration of user - cantered issue
which were not part of attitude and engineering skills at that time. But the designers of the
firm failed to utilize the result of John's ergonomics studies of user behaviour. When john
himself realized this, he started studying the design process that was being followed by the
designers. Johan's study revealed that the design method as an area were driven by the
following factors:

• Lack of order, purpose and human scale

• Inability to balance individual, group, social, and physical environments
• Functional and aesthetic failure in adapting to social, local and physical environments
• Development of material and standardization components that were not suitable for
use in any specify applications
• Creation of artefacts that were not liked by peoples

Johan, however, did not agree with the presently conceived design. He had an entered
different and original philosophy of design.

Johan, Peter and all the attendees of the conference were actually driven by the concerns of
modern industrialization. The way the modern industrialized world was getting manifested
raised a serious concern amongst the designers of that era. They tried their best to understand
the reason behind the limitations posed by modernization.

The member of the conference countered the craftsmen model of design. The craftsmen
model of design made use of tried and true craft- based knowledge. This knowledge was used
in turning raw material into finishing product. This was a standard way of creating product in
the times before industrialization. However the members believed that this single solution of
producing design solution was not enough to meet the growth demands and needs of the
consumers. The single crafts - based solution was not compatible with the complexities posed
by the post- industrial society. The post - industrial society was too complexities posed by the
post - industrial society. The post - industrial society was too complexities and the user had
more demands. Even individual in the society now wanted to use products which exactly
mapped with their needs. The designer had to refer to a long list of instruction before starting
with any design. The member of the conference stressed on this point that designers required
to work in cross- disciplinary teams. The purpose of creating these terms was to ensure that
the design created reflected the various skills and experiences posed by the team members.
The various participant had to bring their unique set of skill language, and experiences to
defined and solve the various problems in whatever context they occurred. The most
important aspect of creating team was to find a method suitable for a particular design
situation Christopher Alexander has written some useful and informative book such as pattern
language and a timeless way of building, on this subject.

When we talk about the term, process and methods, we can use them
interchangeable. In general, they both can be defined using similar set of words. However,
when they are described as two sides of the same coin, they are different. The process has
been derived from the Latin word processus. In Latin the word means movement. A process
can be defined as a naturally occurring or design order of events. It is a sequence of
operations over a particular during of time, which produces desire results. In different words,
a process contain method. A method in a way performing certain take. In is a way of doing
something , especially in a systematic way. Method involves an orderly arrangements of
specific techniques. Therefore, you can say that in a way every method contains a process in
it.

Hence, design method defines 'how' and 'when' things happen. It also suggest the
designer order in which things occur. There are not enough agreed - upon techniques,
language, or tools that are required to implement the design methods. This makes it difficult
to implement design method . Through there exist many conceptual models and framework
but they are not able to ease tools and techniques for the implementation of design methods.
Apart from the unavaliablelity of tools and techniques, there are various other variables also,
which effects the outcome. These variables exist the end result of a similar different outcome
. These variable exist because of the interplay between logic and intuition. This different
affect the end result of a similar method. Therefore, two people using the same method can
arrive at two entirely different outcome. The use of John Christ Jones's book, Design
methods, by various designers is one of the examples which states the different outcome the
same method. Different group took the message of the message of the book in different
directions. Alternative message of using as a framework for improvement and exploration
were used in different ways by the various designers.

After the conference on 'systematic and intuitive methods in engineering,

industrial design, architecture and communication ' in 1962, many participants started
publishing and define an area of research. This area of design focused on design. The initial
work on design of research. This area of design focused on design. The initial work on design
methods seemed to emerge from the following three camps:

• Behaviourism: It interpret design method as a way to explain human

behaviour in relation to the build environment. The clinical approach of
behaviour tends to depend on human behaviour processes that is, taxonomic
activities.
• Reductivism: It divides design methods in to simpler constituents. This
scientific approach of break down a process into smaller parts tends to
depends on rationalism and objectified process.
 • Phenomenology: It approached design methods from an experiential
approach. The experiential approach invokes human experience and
perception.

The study of design methods background is in complement without learning about the
various associations and group that formed after the conference of 1962. One of them was
design research society, which was formed five years after of the conference of 1962. The
society was founded in 1967 by many of the participants of the conference on design
methods. The society states that its purpose is to promote 'the study of and research into the
process of designing in all its fields'. The environment design research association (EDRA) is
another best - know entity. EDRA was founded in 1969, by Henry Sarnoff This association
strives to integrates designers and social science professional to build better environments.
John Christ Jones and Christopher Alexander interacted with the designers associated with
EDRA and other camps, which emerged immediately after the conference of 1962. However,
they both did not approve the interpretations of design methods followed by EDRA and other
campus. They somewhat rejected their interpretations. They both even questioned the original
theses of design methods adopted by this associations.

Hemon Simon , the Nobel laureate, presented a lecture on 'the sciences of the
artificial in 1968'. This lecture proved to be an interesting shift it the understanding of the
design methods and design studies. In this lecture, Herman proposed the method of exploring
the world of man made things using the scientific methods .HE discussed the way man
response to his environment the interacted with. HE emphasised analyse and sentences plays
an important role in the process of creating man- made responses to the environment humans
intact with .

Through this lecture, Simon introduced two important concepts in the field of
design methods and design studies. Bounded rationality and satisfying were the two concepts
that he proposed. Both concepts had a significant impact on the this course of design methods
and newly emerging design studies communities. It had two profaned impacts. First, it enable
the use of scientific ideas to be overlaid on design. Second, it gave rise a debate on wither
design could or should be express and practiced in a type of science. It reduced the emphasis
on intuition.

One of the professors of Istanbul technical university, Nigan Bayazit, published an

excellent overview of the history of design methods. Nigan stated that people had general
notion of design methods as rational methods of incorporation scientific equine and
knowledge into design process. They believed that this incorporation made rational decisions
to adopt to the existing values. But this was not always easy and convenient to achieve.

The following is the list of factors that design research ids concern with :

• Physical Embodiment of man made things: It includes how things work and how
they perform the jobs
• Construction as a Human Activity: It includes the questions such as how do
designers work, how they think and carry out the activity of design.
 • End result of the design : It includes the achievement of a purposeful design activity.
It covers aspects such as, how an artificial thing appears and what does it mean or
stands for.
• Embodiment of configuration: It includes the various structures or the arrangement
of various things in a design.
• Knowledge search and Acquisition: It includes a systematic search how information
related to design. It also includes the acquisition of knowledge related to the activity
of design.

It can therefore be said that many professors and designers have contributed to the emergence
and sustenance of design method. It is because of their hard work and dedication that we have
a well defined structure of design methods.

6.3 Formalization of design methods

When various renowned professors, design and engineers made the practices of design
methods a popular subject, the concept did not remain confined only to Europe. Gradually the
world started achonologying the various aspects of important region which attract many
design professionals. America provided these professional with the platform where they can
easily codify there success in design practices. The designers professionals here got an
assistance of larger theories related to the design method.

The American designers were much more practical at expression design methods.
They were articulate enough to create an underlying language about methods was based on
transforming engineering. they use design to carry out this transformation. whereas on the
other hand, the American approach was focused on the ways through which design could be
managed as extension of business. the reason behind the American approach was the strong
economic system which the American designers were tied to. their economic system
supported design practices and hence their approach had a pinch of freedom and innovation
in it.

Industrial design was the first area that made advancements into systematizing
knowledge through various practices. Raymond Loewy played an important role in elevating
the visibility of industrial design. He did that through the cult of personality. he appeared
three times on the front cover of Time magazine to gain attention. Henry Dreyfuss is another
famous man who had a profound impact on the practice of industrial design. He developed a
systematic and methodical process to shape transporting the environment, as well as products
and packaging . in his book 'Design for people', he engaged in an extensive exploration of the
novel 'science' of ergonomics. In this book, the main focus is on of average consumers.

Unimarks International was one of the world's largest global design firms during
1960's .It had offices in seven countries. Jay Doblin, one of the America's foremost industrial
designers was an employee of unimarks International Pior to Unimark International. Jay
worked for Raymond loweway . After having worked at Unimark International. Doblin
thought of Creating his own firm. And with the experience he gained while working with
Raymond, he established his own Chicago - based firm called Jay Doblin & associates. This
corporation and general Electric. Doblin was a prolific Designer. He was par excellent in
developing new language to describe design. 'A short, Grandiose Theory of Design' is one of
the best articles published in the society of typography art design journal in 1987. In this
article, Doblin presented a straightforward argument for design as a systematic process. He
explained in the article the emerge landscape of systematic process..

The following is the description of design as per as Doblin:

1. For large and complex projects, design had to be attempted with analytical methods.
also, he deduced that it would be irresponsible to rally systematic design against an
adolescent reliance on intuitive particles.
2. Doblin separated direct design from indirect design. in direct design, the craftsperson
works on the artefacts. whereas on the other hand, in an indirect design, the design
created by the designer represents artefacts . by defining this confidence , Doblin
separated design from production in more complex situations.
As time passed , Doblin and other established designers increasingly started engaging
with and responding to the evolving area of specialization in design practices. also ,
the complexity of managing large design programs for many corporations were taken
care of by Doblin and others. in the 21st century, various consultancies which deal
with various aspects of designing have emerged within the design industry. this is
largely the result of his inheritance of business development with design methods and
these firms have championed new and innovative methods of design and have shaped
the way the industry is growing. with this growing popularity of design methods, it
became quiet important and essential to discuss the upstream movement of design. it
was a natural process to discuss the involvement of design with the specifies of the
problems. this involvement was not limited to the traditional mode of production only
is directly related to human conditions . this progression is the result of generation of
inputs dictated by human conditions in various contexts and references. these
approaches make use of sustainable methods - based mode of making. they take in to
account critical analytic and synthetic skills towards more informed and inspired
specifications . these specifications are grounded in the following features:
• investigating human circumstances to draw out impressions.
• Engaging participations by client - side and end - users in design process
• open articulation by the practitioners of varied disciplines facilitated by
design.

This is how the formalization of design method and practices happened. in some
books and reference material , formalization of design method is also been referred to
professional design practice. let us now learn the significant role of formalization of
design practices.

the approach adopted by the various practitioners after the conference of 1962
was however completely different from what john Christopher Jones and group of
engineers and designers proposed in the conference. Many practitioners of design
 began to compare and contrast the complexities of the market and clients. they
confronted these complexities through actual deigns opportunities. they addressed the
issues of distribution , specifications , users , and innovations
innovations . the absence of any
established method made it essential for each practitioner to create a new framework
of design . as there were no strict standards or guidelines to be followed, each
designer began to develop his /her own language to describe a new way w of design.
like other market-based
based models, there arose many competing ideas and views about
these new methods and the basis on which they were designed. most of these
practitioners may have been aware of the various design methods movements
happening across
ross the world. but there were also many who had no clue about such
movements. yet all he conference of 1962. the tenants of the conference advocated a
rigorous way of creating design. however , there existed some disagreements as well.
these were basically ly against the social perspectives and criticisms of ordinary
products of 1962 participants.

Figure 6.2 shows the relationship amongst the design methods, technology, user, and
business process.

fig 6.2 Relationship between design methods, technologies, user, and business
process.

6.4 Design management

design management can be defined as an approach in which organizations make design relevant
designs in a market and costumer oriented way. It also optimizes the design relevant processes.
Design management is concerned with all level of business performance
performance and is a long, continues, and
comprehensive activity which is closely related to it. It effects design from the initial phase of fussy
front- end to the final phrase of design execution. Design management acts in the interface of
management and design andd function as link between the various platforms involved in the business.
These platforms include the platforms of design technology, design thinking, brand management,
corporate management , and marketing management. in an enterprise it works on the internal as well
as external interfaces. in other words, design management can be called an area of study and
application that roses the awareness of the business professionals on issues such as, how to integrate
and manage designs.

Design management integrates business issues, systems and methods , and manages there
interdependency with design activities and outcomes. these design activities and outcomes support the
economic systems. The economic system is further benefited by a designer skill, vision, and
deliverables. although the relations we have discuss just now have been identified, it has not been
universally accepted by various design communities and associations.

Designs have a strong bond not only with the clients but with the end users too. these end
users are the users who actually consume products and services. Petergorb was one of the strongest
early advocates. He was the foreigner director of London business school's centre for design
management. design has not always been collaborated well with the business, nether as a function
within corporations nor as independent consultancies. both the market and clients have traditionally
viewed design as an expressive and production function. they never knew strategic assert. designers,
until now, have use their skills and knowledge to create design only. That was there main area focus.
They indirectly addressed the larger issues involved in this creative process. they were not
comfortable and confident enough to articled there values to business and terms that will be
understood by the business executives.

Many attempts were made to bridge this gap. In England, the British war time government
founded the British design comes in 1944. This council is known as design council now. It was
founded with the object tool of promotion the improvement of design in the product of British
industry. This council made view of all the practical means to improvise the design of products. The
design management institute (DMI) was founded in 1975. It is an international non profit
organization. This organization seeks to spend the awareness of design as an important part of
business strategy. DMI has become the leading international authority and recourses on design
management.

6.5 Proliferation of information technology

Initially, design method was focused on the integrated of design into engineering. And gradually
started recognizing the multidesplinery nature of solving contemporary problems in all its
complicated forms. John Christ Jones, as a share holder among many, recognized the role of business
in design methods a long time back. however, he never imagined that design method will be a
business management tool. Design management emphasises on the finding design as a business
function. It provides a language and method of the managing business effectively . Thus, Design
management plays a significant role in managing the various functions of a business.

The technologists alone were not going to create 'killer' applications. the people associated
with the internet business realised this fact quite early. Due to this realization, company such as
sapient, viant, scient, rezor fish, and us were /CKS begin to hire employees with a particular strategy.
They hired a wide variety of professionals to team up in the three broad catagerories. the following
are three groups into which employees were divided:
 • Business concealing: The professional belong to this team enters the various business models
involved. They also undertake the responsibility of front and research of markets.
• Technologist: The team members of this team bind together the legality systems, related to
the use of technologies, with internet based technologist.
• Brand creating professional: The members belonging to this team create a flawless costumer
experience. With the use of their creativity they design the experience a customer has with the
application on use of any technology.

There exist some other professionals also, such as , customer relationship management (CRM)team,
supply chain, and enterprise resource planning(ERP). The professionals belong to any of the groups
discuss above. The professionals belonging to all these terms or groups had to work hard to rapidly
accelerate time to value. They also had to learn to do things that did not have defined standards or
enough examples to refer to. These reference to various divisions of employees into different teams
was an amplification of Donald Schon's theories. His theories explained how unstable knowledge
forms the base of development of new ideas. These new ideas developed with the help of a
phenomenological approach of direct application and experience of the professional.

The strategy started to be redefined from an MBA focused domain. It began to be redefined into an
area where in both the professionals from both technology and brand or creative terms moved
upstream. Being defined into such an area, it got engaged with upfront strategy. Other professionals
from congestive science, ethnography, and library science were also incorporated in this new
redefined domain. These groups were inherited with many rigorous methods which were based on
research. These methods were overlaid into various area such as business, technology, brand or
creative. With the implementation of these researches based methods, new approaches were
developed. These were mainly user centric. These approaches result in the creation of a whole work
flow of systems. These workflow systems help enterprises to accommodate and encourage diversity in
tools as well as skills. These diverse groups brought into focus markedly new models and language.
These languages and models were completely different from their local and native disciplines. The
different languages and models posts some significant integration challenges in determining the flow
of work. These challenges include the number of hours required.

Clement Mok, the founder of studio Archetype, which is now acquired by Sapient, recognised the
existing trend. On the base of his understanding of this strength clement began to articulate a new
professional design situation. The new design situation was driven by the new informational
technology. These technology were marketed by the internet and advancement in computing media.
Clement in his design described a multimedia landscape. The landscape in the design appeared to be
covering into an integrated digital space. Closely associated with this new design situation was a
redefinition of roles and skills that would build, create, subtend, and innovate the new dynamic
environment. Clement, for this design, called for graphical and visual designer to broaden their
perspective. He instructed the designer to go beyond the traditional art effects and methods, and
immersed themselves in collaborative workspace. In his book , designing business, Clement
emphasise on the redefined design practice. The book discussed the effect of technology change on
design practice. The following quote from designing business from Clement Mok highlights the role
of designers in redefining design methods:

..... Designers are in a position to promulgate new values and to define and quantify the effects of those values,
and over the next ten years, their optimum role will be to design ' understanding'. The age we are living now is
an incredible time because of the extent to which designer, business people, engineer, and technologist can
redefine their roles......
They were around thirty years ahead of the expansion of the internet. They explained the base premise
of value of expansion through computer and internet technology by stating the following words:

...... The ideal picture of a man-machine symbolises is ..... One in which machine and human intelligence are
linked into a quick responding network that permits rapid access to all published information's..... The net(sic)
effect is expected to be one of mutual stimulation in which open minded people and programmes nudge each
other into unpredictable , novel but realistic exploration.....

6.7 DESIGN PLANNING

Design methods can be practiced through various means. There is no single way to practice them.
John Christ recognised the practice of design methods by stating the following words:

..... Methodology should not be a fix track to fixed destination, but a conversion about everything that could be
made to happen. The language of the conversation must bridge the logic gap between past and future, but in
doing so it should not limit the variety of possible futures that are discussed nor it should force the choice of a
future that is unfree....

After the enhancement of 1962 towards design methods, the focus has been developed a series of
relevant and sound techniques to solve problems. The association, firms, and various designers
working on design methods and practices emphasised on creating humanistic problem solving
procedures. The main purpose of these techniques and procedures has been to reduce the avoidable
errors and oversight the factors that can adversely affect the design solutions. The key benefit of these
techniques was to find a method that is best suitable for a particular design situation. the benefit of
these original work has always been abstracted in new designs many times over. however ,in today's
environment several of their original ideas have been used to integrate contemporary design methods .
following is the list of some of the ideas that have been used in collaboration with the contemporary
ideas :

• make the design user - centric

• using base research methods to confirm doubts with fact
• using technique such as brain storming to break the mental patterns come ablogs and
presidents
• collaborating the original nature of design with other disciplines

the inheriting synthesis nature of a method is the biggest challenge for design as an area of study and
action. Also, it effects the use of the method and its attempt to create shared values. This enables the
design to extremely malleable in nature. in order to sort the end needs of individual practitioners, this
method also allows the design to borrow and incorporate ideas and concepts that are taken from a
verity of professionals. It also enables the design to be venerable. This activities make design a
discipline inexectiable as a shared body of knowledge.

In1983, Donald schn published his book, the reflectively practhinistional . he noticed that the
traditional professional with his strong based of knowledge, such as law and medicine became
unstable this happened because of the outdated notions of "Technical - rationality" as the grounding of
the professional knowledge. Practinistion could actually explain how they "Think on their field". Also
they were able to describe how the make use of a standards set of frameworks technique. The
increasing instability of traditional knowledge was foreseen by Donald Schon and therefore he could
come up with majors that need to be adopted to achieve success it the change circumstance. This in
accordance to the original founders of design methods. Like original founders, they too aimed at
breaking the unimaginative and static society. They to wanted to unify collaboration,explorationand
institution.

The emergence of design methods have influence design education and design practice . the
design methods have influent can

design education and practice .the design methods have benefited design community by help to
create introduction, which did not necessarily allow collaboration .

collaboration was hampered because of the gate keeping areas expertise and knowledge. the
introduction could be created only because of the instability

of the traditions professionals . had they remain stable, it would have been possible. Design, by its
true nature, is an cross functional activity. It involves individual who have trasanverse varied
discipline to question and innovate .

the challenge in design planning is to transform the experience , framework, and perspective
of an individual into shared , understandable and transmittable area of knowledge . victor margoliyan

believes that this transformation could be difficult because of several factors .the following are some
of the reasons to support the difficulty in this transformation:

• domain knowledge is a mixture of vocation or discipline and interest . this create hybrid
definition which further degrades the share knowledge .
• due to proliferation in the intellual capital of design and the resulting pluralism in its wider
scholarly pursuit, a dilution of focus and share it language has come about. Ungovernable and
unmanageable laisser -faire values have surface as a result of this .
• since the focus on individual narratives is too integral to individual explorations of the design
discourse, it has lead the discourse towards becoming a personal point -of-view instead of
being a critical aggregate of shared values.

6.8 Summary
• Design method is a widely used term. it refers to a shared belief in an exploratory and
rigorous to solve problems with the help of design.
• this act is a part and parcel of what designers of today is complex world aim to accomplish.
• through the hard work of the original practitioners and designers, the design methods have
been able to evolve from an unknown domain to a widely used technique.
• the use of design methods in design studies and practices has played has played a significant
role.
• the growth of information technologies too has been of great importance in the growth and
planning of design methods.
• while studying the background of the design methods, you learnt how the 'the conference on
systematic and intuitive methods in engineering, industrial design , architecture and
communications ' influenced the present design management and design planning.
• john Chris Jones has played a significant role in defining and redefining the traditional
methods of design studies.
 • with the help of these original practitioners and professional, the designers of today can use
the design methods for problem solving in a very convent and effective way.

6.9 Key teams

• Aesthetic: Concerning the appreciation of duty or the nations of good taste.
• Artefacts: Anything manmade which of arch logy intrest,or is a work of art.
• Behaversium: The theory or doctrine that human or animal psychology can be accurately
studies only through the examination and annalist of objectively observaranlre and
quantifiable. Behave events, in contrast with subjective mental states.
• Ergonomics: An applied science that coordinates the design of devices, systems, and physical
working conditions with the capacities and requirements of the worker.
• Hybrid: The offspring of two animals or plants of different breeds, verities, specs, or genera,
esp. as produced through human manipulation for specific genetic charters tic.
• Industrialization: to convert to the ideals , methods,aims,etc.,of industrialism.
• intuitive: capable of being perceived or known by intuition.
• laissez-faire: an economic doctrine that opposes governmental regulation of or interference in
commerce beyond the minimum necessary for a free- enterprise system to operate according
to its own economic laws.
• modernization: to become modern ; adopt modern ways , views , etc.
• phenomenology: a philosophy or method of inquiry based on the premise that reality consists
of objects and events as they are perceived or understood in human consciousness and not of
anything independent of human consciousness.
• proliferation : to cause to grow or increase rapidly.
• Reductivism: a school of abstract painting and sculpture that emphasizes extreme
simplification of form , as by the use of basic shapes and monochromatic palettes of primary
colours, objectivity, and anonymity of style.
• technologists: a person who specializes in technology.
• vocation: a particular occupation, business, or profession.