Generating Ideas and Concepts - Medical Device Design: Innovation from Concept to Market - page 106

what would you do?”: silly, I know, but it works for me! Also, I get told off for being untidy.
That's because when I am being creative I keep all of my ideas in heaps around me - when
the project is finished the papers are filed, the office tidied, all ready for the next one. For
some that is annoying and they say “How can you work like that?” A colleague of mine never
ever had any pieces of paper on show, at any time: I used to ask him “How can you work like
that?” Personal space is just that, personal. We are all different; space cannot be imposed
(bosses, CEOs, and supervisors take note). Many modern companies (Google for example)
have revolutionary workspaces.
Grossman (1988) says, “being creative boils down to having fun.” He talks about two kinds
of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic . Creative space can stimulate. Apparently increasing
extrinsic motivation with an attractive and stimulating place offers only short-term benefits.
On the other hand the intrinsic motivation your space provides yields longer-term results. Its
physical properties should be flexible; it should be adaptable so that the designers see it as a
product of their own making. More importantly the space should reflect and support the needs
of its users, and its use.
“The more flexible and adaptable your design, the longer you will see both intrinsic and
extrinsic motivational rewards.” (Lloyd, 2011)
This is nothing new; at the turn of the twentieth century Henri Fayol was looking at
workers in an office space with a view to motivating productivity. He thought, and I
paraphrase, that including some “nice things” in the workplace would produce benefits, so
they introduced some and productivity and general “happiness” increased - but tailed off.
So they introduced some more “nice things”; productivity increased - and tailed off. In
the end they took all of the nice things away and went back to the same space as before -
productivity increased again! He found that the people were motivated by the “changes.”
People like to feel like they belong, like they have ownership…so why not make them
feel so?
The lesson here is that your creative space needs to be your creative space. You need to feel
comfortable; it needs to be stimulating and amenable to change. Utmost and foremost it needs
to work - for you.
6.4 Generating Concepts/Ideas
This next section is concerned with tools that you can use to generate ideas and concepts.
They are not a complete list and you should refer to the library as much as possible. Three
texts that are useful starting points are by Hurst (1999) , Dym and Little (2000) , and Ulrich
and Eppinger (2003) .