I was at a design company today sitting in on a brainstorm session their design and engineering team was having. Weirdly enough it's the first time the company has done anything like it in ten years. Twenty people sitting around a table sharing their ideas. Some good, some awful. It felt exactly like our classes. Some people had sketches, some power point, some nothing more than a verbal explanation. The one thing I noticed was that everyone was not only very receptive to every idea ( even though some were clearly not great ) they were also quick to jump on a twist or improvement to make the product better or different. If an idea sucked, they would tease the person, but then analyze the strengths that made the person think it had some merit in the first place - trying to relay those strengths in to a different product line or idea. Then the chief designer made an observation and request: he wanted his designers to start drawing out products, using language or pictures, side by side, and have them try to find links to connect completely opposing or different genres or product lines to try to come up with new niche ideas. The following is a link to something sent out by one of them after the meeting. It's a couple of guys who decided to make the old video game Tron in to a real life scenario using bikes. Make a computer game real. New game? Why not? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb1Z9VU_Yco Another interesting thing was that they all seemed to research new technologies and ideas using Youtube. Everyone had a Youtube link to support their research and express or explain an idea.
How did you get in on that meeting? Sounds like a good networking opportunity.
ReplyDelete