Synesthesia
Synesthesia is the ability to perceive the world in a way which enables your sensations to cross over between senses. It is also one of the techniques for generating ideas.
A person with synesthesia can describe the colour of lilacs with words; imagine touching a nightingale song or what would Homer Simpson be to the taste.
Listening to colours or seeing sounds is unusual, but amusing and helpful for developing creative thinking. This creative technique is based on experiences like these.
During the brainstorming we carry out 5 exercises, each of them allowing us to look at the task through the prism of different ways of perception.
This format is suitable for improving a current product, creating new products based on existing ones, finding ideas for product promotion and taking a fresh look at routine processes.
We have prepared convenient templates that you can download and use during team brain storming. To use a template, follow the link and click “Use template”:
Create a Miro board
Prepare a brainstorming template with 10 fields: Warm-up, Given, Hearing, Smell, Touch, Muscle sense, Emotional feeling, Ideas synthesis, Discussion, Further steps.
Formulate the task
Place a photo of the object and the problem to be solved into the Given field.
Spell out rules for participants
At the beginning of any brainstorming, we pronounce the rules to be followed during the process. There are only 4 of them:
- Raise your hand to speak.
- Say if you need a break.
- Do not let other things distract you during the brainstorming.
- All ideas are welcomed. If you want to criticize, suggest something in return.
Do a warm-up
The warm-up helps to "wake up" the brain and switch participants from previous tasks to the current one. As a result, the team gets involved in the process more quickly.
To warm up before the brainstorming, we do a simple activity like the "find the odd one" task: we list 4 different objects on stickers and come up with a criterion to take any of them away. We start with their shape, purpose or colour - anything that can make one differ from the rest of them.
Describe the sensation
Fantasize and imagine sounds, smells, tactile sensations and emotions. Capture the associations on stickers. Allocate 6 minutes for each step.
Hearing. What sounds the product makes and what sounds it associates with.
Smell. How and what the product smells like, what scent it associates with.
Touch. What the product feels like to the touch.
Muscle sense. What you want to do with the product.
Emotion. What feelings, emotions, sensations the product evokes.
Synthesize ideas
Take 3 minutes to review all the stickers. Then allocate 15 minutes to generate ideas: get inspired by what's written and think of ways to solve the problem until you run out of time and creativity.
Combine multiple senses, two or more. For example, "smell + emotion" or "sound + smell + touch + touch + emotion + touch".
Vote and discuss options
Review the resulting ideas. Everyone picks 2 ideas that they remember most and puts them on the stickers.
The participants vote by distributing emoji among stickers and then the group discuss the results out loud and record new ideas, if any. Each participant has 6 emoji for voting:
Follow-up
Assign the tasks to the team members; set up a deadline.
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