Cyberspace and IdentityAuthor(s) Sherry TurkleReviewed wo.docxtheodorelove43763
Cyberspace and Identity
Author(s): Sherry Turkle
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 28, No. 6 (Nov., 1999), pp. 643-648
Published by: American Sociological Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2655534 .
Accessed: 28/11/2012 23:32
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]
.
American Sociological Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Contemporary Sociology.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.168.52.68 on Wed, 28 Nov 2012 23:32:32 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=asa
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2655534?origin=JSTOR-pdf
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
- = -
Looking Toward Cyberspace:
Beyond Grounded Sociology
Cyberspace and Identity
SHERRY TURKLE
Program in Science, Technology, and Society
Massachusetts Institute of Bechnolo<gy
We come to see ourselves differently as we catch
sight of our images in the mirror of the machine.
Over a decade ago, when I first called the com-
puter a "second self" (1984), these identity-
transforming relationships were most usually
one-on-one, a person alone with a machine.1
This is no longer the case. A rapidly expanding
system of networks, collectively known as the
Internet, links millions of people together in
new spaces that are changing the way we think,
the nature of our sexuality, the form of our com-
munities, our very identities. In cyberspace, we
are learning to live in virtual worlds. We may
find ourselves alone as we navigate virtual
oceans, unravel virtual mysteries, and engineer
virtual skyscrapers. But increasingly, when we
step through the looking glass, other people are
there as well.
Over the past decade, I have been engaged in
the ethnographic and clinical study of how peo-
ple negotiate the virtual and the "real" as they
represent themselves on computer screens
linked through the Internet. For many people,
such experiences challenge what they have tra-
ditionally called "identity," which they are
moved to recast in terms of multiple windows
and parallel lives. Online life is not the only fac-
tor that is pushing them in this direction; there
is no simple sense in which computers are caus-
ing a shift in notions of identity. It is, rather,
that today's life on the screen dramatizes and
concretizes a range of cultural trends tha.
NHH - FRONT LINES ON ADOPTION OF DIGITAL AND AI-BASED SERVICES
November 5, 2023
Speaker: Jim Spohrer (https://www.linkedin.com/in/spohrer/)
Host: Tor Andreassen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tor-wallin-andreassen-1aa9031/)
Companion presentation: https://www.slideshare.net/issip/nhh-20231105-v6pptx
The Pervasive Experience - project review July 2010Rob Manson
This document reviews the Pervasive Experience project. In this project the driving assumption is that increasingly pervasive, networked technologies are impacting our lives. The research question is: How is Pervasive Computing changing you?
Improvising The Internet: The epistemic cultures of Hackers, Snowboarders and...Trond Arne Undheim
The reception was quite stunning when I presented this at http://www.aoir.org/2002/
Now, the theory, and PhD that followed has been turned in to a leadership book, Leadership From Below, see http://www.leadershipfrombelow.com
RCA Design Products Guest Lecture: From theory to making and back again – or,...Kat Braybrooke
Guest Lecture // Royal College of Art's Design Products MFA series "Exploring Emergent Futures":
“What is called ‘making’ in North America and Europe,” he said, “is, frankly, a luxurious pastime of wealthy people... all over what is called the Global South there are makers everywhere, only they are not called makers. There are fab labs everywhere, only they are not called fab labs.”
— Chris Csikszentmihályi, director MIT Centre for Future Civic Media
What’s happening here? And how can we fix this? This presentation is a call for new perspectives on making that are critical, hands-on and research-based – helping us think both *through* and *with* objects to bring about fundamental + sustainable lifestyle alternatives. It looks at different theoretical approaches to machine materiality, from hacking to social science and "jugaad" to psychogeography, and from Actor Network Theory and Material Semiotics, to Situationism and Relational Aesthetics, to Critical Making and Critical Design.
It also asks two big questions that have been nagging at me from my own experiences with community making + fabrication.
First, how can we better correlate the making of objects with critical reflection about their effects?
Second, how can we engage in sustainable making (both environmental and social) without producing material excesses or disempowering lesser-served communities?
*** Note: This version does not include full lecture notes or further sources for reading. If you'd like either, feel free to get in touch @codekat as I'm happy to share these. ****
This talk considers some of the challenges of grassroots design commons research and practice drawing on field research undertaken over the last decade. Trends towards investing in formal applied methods that circumscribe commons spaces (e.g., holocracy or sociocracy) often obfuscate struggles to navigate power dynamics within organizations, because ‘slippage’ between regulated and unregulated contexts where power plays emerge is persistent and indeed inevitable. Various theorists of commons understand that commons are not bracketed off from other forms of social cooperation, but rather are diffuse and co-exist (e.g., with capitalism) and understanding this as constitutive of our daily lives seems prescient. Furthermore, a long history of feminist theory has sought to problematize the construction and enactment of these types of boundary conditions, inside/outside spaces, implying design commons research and practice needs to take stock and aim to recentre these feminist foundations.
Cyberspace and IdentityAuthor(s) Sherry TurkleReviewed wo.docxtheodorelove43763
Cyberspace and Identity
Author(s): Sherry Turkle
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 28, No. 6 (Nov., 1999), pp. 643-648
Published by: American Sociological Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2655534 .
Accessed: 28/11/2012 23:32
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]
.
American Sociological Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Contemporary Sociology.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.168.52.68 on Wed, 28 Nov 2012 23:32:32 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=asa
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2655534?origin=JSTOR-pdf
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
- = -
Looking Toward Cyberspace:
Beyond Grounded Sociology
Cyberspace and Identity
SHERRY TURKLE
Program in Science, Technology, and Society
Massachusetts Institute of Bechnolo<gy
We come to see ourselves differently as we catch
sight of our images in the mirror of the machine.
Over a decade ago, when I first called the com-
puter a "second self" (1984), these identity-
transforming relationships were most usually
one-on-one, a person alone with a machine.1
This is no longer the case. A rapidly expanding
system of networks, collectively known as the
Internet, links millions of people together in
new spaces that are changing the way we think,
the nature of our sexuality, the form of our com-
munities, our very identities. In cyberspace, we
are learning to live in virtual worlds. We may
find ourselves alone as we navigate virtual
oceans, unravel virtual mysteries, and engineer
virtual skyscrapers. But increasingly, when we
step through the looking glass, other people are
there as well.
Over the past decade, I have been engaged in
the ethnographic and clinical study of how peo-
ple negotiate the virtual and the "real" as they
represent themselves on computer screens
linked through the Internet. For many people,
such experiences challenge what they have tra-
ditionally called "identity," which they are
moved to recast in terms of multiple windows
and parallel lives. Online life is not the only fac-
tor that is pushing them in this direction; there
is no simple sense in which computers are caus-
ing a shift in notions of identity. It is, rather,
that today's life on the screen dramatizes and
concretizes a range of cultural trends tha.
NHH - FRONT LINES ON ADOPTION OF DIGITAL AND AI-BASED SERVICES
November 5, 2023
Speaker: Jim Spohrer (https://www.linkedin.com/in/spohrer/)
Host: Tor Andreassen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tor-wallin-andreassen-1aa9031/)
Companion presentation: https://www.slideshare.net/issip/nhh-20231105-v6pptx
The Pervasive Experience - project review July 2010Rob Manson
This document reviews the Pervasive Experience project. In this project the driving assumption is that increasingly pervasive, networked technologies are impacting our lives. The research question is: How is Pervasive Computing changing you?
Improvising The Internet: The epistemic cultures of Hackers, Snowboarders and...Trond Arne Undheim
The reception was quite stunning when I presented this at http://www.aoir.org/2002/
Now, the theory, and PhD that followed has been turned in to a leadership book, Leadership From Below, see http://www.leadershipfrombelow.com
RCA Design Products Guest Lecture: From theory to making and back again – or,...Kat Braybrooke
Guest Lecture // Royal College of Art's Design Products MFA series "Exploring Emergent Futures":
“What is called ‘making’ in North America and Europe,” he said, “is, frankly, a luxurious pastime of wealthy people... all over what is called the Global South there are makers everywhere, only they are not called makers. There are fab labs everywhere, only they are not called fab labs.”
— Chris Csikszentmihályi, director MIT Centre for Future Civic Media
What’s happening here? And how can we fix this? This presentation is a call for new perspectives on making that are critical, hands-on and research-based – helping us think both *through* and *with* objects to bring about fundamental + sustainable lifestyle alternatives. It looks at different theoretical approaches to machine materiality, from hacking to social science and "jugaad" to psychogeography, and from Actor Network Theory and Material Semiotics, to Situationism and Relational Aesthetics, to Critical Making and Critical Design.
It also asks two big questions that have been nagging at me from my own experiences with community making + fabrication.
First, how can we better correlate the making of objects with critical reflection about their effects?
Second, how can we engage in sustainable making (both environmental and social) without producing material excesses or disempowering lesser-served communities?
*** Note: This version does not include full lecture notes or further sources for reading. If you'd like either, feel free to get in touch @codekat as I'm happy to share these. ****
This talk considers some of the challenges of grassroots design commons research and practice drawing on field research undertaken over the last decade. Trends towards investing in formal applied methods that circumscribe commons spaces (e.g., holocracy or sociocracy) often obfuscate struggles to navigate power dynamics within organizations, because ‘slippage’ between regulated and unregulated contexts where power plays emerge is persistent and indeed inevitable. Various theorists of commons understand that commons are not bracketed off from other forms of social cooperation, but rather are diffuse and co-exist (e.g., with capitalism) and understanding this as constitutive of our daily lives seems prescient. Furthermore, a long history of feminist theory has sought to problematize the construction and enactment of these types of boundary conditions, inside/outside spaces, implying design commons research and practice needs to take stock and aim to recentre these feminist foundations.
Behind the courtain of a paper: Interdisciplinary research from the idea to d...Federico Gobbo
DIT - Dublin Institute of Technology, Dublin 2, Ireland. 7 November 2015. Special Lecture within the module “Research Methods and Proposal Writing” in the School of Computing.
Facilitating Complexity: A Pervert's Guide to ExplorationWilliam Evans
A talk given at the Melbourne Cynefin meetup. A set of riffs on how to facilitate teams exploring the Complex Domain.
Will Evans explores the convergence of practice and theory using Lean Systems, Design Thinking, DevOps, and LeanUX with global corporations from NYC to Berlin to Singapore. As Chief Design Officer at PraxisFlow, he works with a select group of corporate clients undergoing Lean and Agile transformations across the entire organization. Will is also the Design Thinker-in-Residence at New York University's Stern Graduate School of Management.
Will was previously the Managing Director of TLCLabs, the world's leading Lean Design Innovation consultancy where he brought LeanUX and Design Thinking to large media, finance, and healthcare companies.
Before TLC, he led experience design and research for TheLadders in New York City. He has over 15 years industry experience in service design innovation, user experience strategy and research. His roles include directing UX for social network alanysis & terrorism modeling at AIR Worldwide, UX Architect for social media site Gather.com, and UX Architect for travel search engine Kayak.com. He worked at Lotus/IBM where he was the senior information architect working in Knowledge Management, and for Curl - a DARPA-funded MIT project when he was at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science.
He lives in New York, NY, and drinks far too much coffee. He Co-Founded and Co-Chaired the LeanUX NYC conference now in it’s 6th year, founded the LEAD SUMMIT NYC, and was also the User Experience track chair for the Agile 2013 and Agile 2014 conferences.
The aim of this research paper is to investigate how space and landscape provide tangible (i.e. shared resources) and intangible (i.e. shared sense of community) benefits for entrepreneurs. The research question I would like to explore is why are entrepreneurs attracted to and participate in shared space? What benefits does these spaces provide? What are the similar environmental conditions within the physical space? Ultimately, this paper will seek to understand how communal working and co-creation necessary (or not) for innovation.
Design Fiction: Something and the Something in the Age of the SomethingJulian Bleecker
Presentation at Design Engaged 2008 of some early thinking on props, prototypes and fiction as frameworks for engaging design activities. Ideas in process.
More at: http://tinyurl.com/45sv3z
"L'espressione latina dramatis personae, tradotta alla lettera, significa maschere del dramma e quindi è usata per indicare i personaggi."
"In user-centered design and marketing, personas are fictional characters created to represent the different user types that might use a site, brand, or product in a similar way.
Personas are useful in considering the goals, desires, and limitations of brand buyers and users in order to help to guide decisions about a service, product or interaction space such as features, interactions, and visual design of a website. Personas may also be used as part of a user-centered design process for designing software and are also considered a part of interaction design (IxD), having been used in industrial design and more recently for online marketing purposes.
A user persona is a representation of the goals and behavior of a hypothesized group of users. In most cases, personas are synthesized from data collected from interviews with users. They are captured in 1–2 page descriptions that include behavior patterns, goals, skills, attitudes, and environment, with a few fictional personal details to make the persona a realistic character. For each product, more than one persona is usually created, but one persona should always be the primary focus for the design."
(Wikipedia)
Chance and fate in making the connections that ignite the creative spark. At one time or other we all will call on inspiration, support and/or ‘reality checks’ from others with a different perspective, or perhaps wish we had done in hindsight! Some thoughts on how this can happen and how we might help develop an environment to increase the chances of it happening.
Slides for a remote presentation/session for http://conference2009.e-uni.ee/index.php?n=en
SCHOOL - FROM TEACHING INSTITUTION TO LEARNING SPACE which takes place April 02 - 03, 2009 at the Estonian University of Life Sciences conference centre (Kreutzwaldi 1A, Tartu), Estonia (but I'll be in Seattle and it will be 4:30 am my time!)
Echo chambers (and Filter Bubbles) in Media and Social NetworksPlural (think tank)
Our perception of reality - and of the choices that we have in life - has always been influenced by our surroundings: education, friends, favourite newspaper, Facebook feed etc. On the one hand this allows us to live our values among like-minded people but on the other, it can oversimplify reality and deceive us.
An echo chamber is a group situation where information, ideas and beliefs are amplified or reinforced by transmission and repetition, while different or competing views are censored, disallowed or otherwise under-represented.
This slideshow is summarising pros and cons of Echo Chambers and Filter Bubbles in Media and Social Networks.
Networking; past present and future; and the importance of personalityEd Mitchell
Presentation about networking and the current tyranny of growth and quantity over quality in networks. Outline of the importance of considering personalities, relevant facilitation and some future methods to balance it
Francesca Gottschalk - How can education support child empowerment.pptxEduSkills OECD
Francesca Gottschalk from the OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation presents at the Ask an Expert Webinar: How can education support child empowerment?
Embracing GenAI - A Strategic ImperativePeter Windle
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies such as Generative AI, Image Generators and Large Language Models have had a dramatic impact on teaching, learning and assessment over the past 18 months. The most immediate threat AI posed was to Academic Integrity with Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) focusing their efforts on combating the use of GenAI in assessment. Guidelines were developed for staff and students, policies put in place too. Innovative educators have forged paths in the use of Generative AI for teaching, learning and assessments leading to pockets of transformation springing up across HEIs, often with little or no top-down guidance, support or direction.
This Gasta posits a strategic approach to integrating AI into HEIs to prepare staff, students and the curriculum for an evolving world and workplace. We will highlight the advantages of working with these technologies beyond the realm of teaching, learning and assessment by considering prompt engineering skills, industry impact, curriculum changes, and the need for staff upskilling. In contrast, not engaging strategically with Generative AI poses risks, including falling behind peers, missed opportunities and failing to ensure our graduates remain employable. The rapid evolution of AI technologies necessitates a proactive and strategic approach if we are to remain relevant.
More Related Content
Similar to The tyranny of collaborative ideation | by Lars Jerichau | Aug, 2023 | UX Collective.pdf
Behind the courtain of a paper: Interdisciplinary research from the idea to d...Federico Gobbo
DIT - Dublin Institute of Technology, Dublin 2, Ireland. 7 November 2015. Special Lecture within the module “Research Methods and Proposal Writing” in the School of Computing.
Facilitating Complexity: A Pervert's Guide to ExplorationWilliam Evans
A talk given at the Melbourne Cynefin meetup. A set of riffs on how to facilitate teams exploring the Complex Domain.
Will Evans explores the convergence of practice and theory using Lean Systems, Design Thinking, DevOps, and LeanUX with global corporations from NYC to Berlin to Singapore. As Chief Design Officer at PraxisFlow, he works with a select group of corporate clients undergoing Lean and Agile transformations across the entire organization. Will is also the Design Thinker-in-Residence at New York University's Stern Graduate School of Management.
Will was previously the Managing Director of TLCLabs, the world's leading Lean Design Innovation consultancy where he brought LeanUX and Design Thinking to large media, finance, and healthcare companies.
Before TLC, he led experience design and research for TheLadders in New York City. He has over 15 years industry experience in service design innovation, user experience strategy and research. His roles include directing UX for social network alanysis & terrorism modeling at AIR Worldwide, UX Architect for social media site Gather.com, and UX Architect for travel search engine Kayak.com. He worked at Lotus/IBM where he was the senior information architect working in Knowledge Management, and for Curl - a DARPA-funded MIT project when he was at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science.
He lives in New York, NY, and drinks far too much coffee. He Co-Founded and Co-Chaired the LeanUX NYC conference now in it’s 6th year, founded the LEAD SUMMIT NYC, and was also the User Experience track chair for the Agile 2013 and Agile 2014 conferences.
The aim of this research paper is to investigate how space and landscape provide tangible (i.e. shared resources) and intangible (i.e. shared sense of community) benefits for entrepreneurs. The research question I would like to explore is why are entrepreneurs attracted to and participate in shared space? What benefits does these spaces provide? What are the similar environmental conditions within the physical space? Ultimately, this paper will seek to understand how communal working and co-creation necessary (or not) for innovation.
Design Fiction: Something and the Something in the Age of the SomethingJulian Bleecker
Presentation at Design Engaged 2008 of some early thinking on props, prototypes and fiction as frameworks for engaging design activities. Ideas in process.
More at: http://tinyurl.com/45sv3z
"L'espressione latina dramatis personae, tradotta alla lettera, significa maschere del dramma e quindi è usata per indicare i personaggi."
"In user-centered design and marketing, personas are fictional characters created to represent the different user types that might use a site, brand, or product in a similar way.
Personas are useful in considering the goals, desires, and limitations of brand buyers and users in order to help to guide decisions about a service, product or interaction space such as features, interactions, and visual design of a website. Personas may also be used as part of a user-centered design process for designing software and are also considered a part of interaction design (IxD), having been used in industrial design and more recently for online marketing purposes.
A user persona is a representation of the goals and behavior of a hypothesized group of users. In most cases, personas are synthesized from data collected from interviews with users. They are captured in 1–2 page descriptions that include behavior patterns, goals, skills, attitudes, and environment, with a few fictional personal details to make the persona a realistic character. For each product, more than one persona is usually created, but one persona should always be the primary focus for the design."
(Wikipedia)
Chance and fate in making the connections that ignite the creative spark. At one time or other we all will call on inspiration, support and/or ‘reality checks’ from others with a different perspective, or perhaps wish we had done in hindsight! Some thoughts on how this can happen and how we might help develop an environment to increase the chances of it happening.
Slides for a remote presentation/session for http://conference2009.e-uni.ee/index.php?n=en
SCHOOL - FROM TEACHING INSTITUTION TO LEARNING SPACE which takes place April 02 - 03, 2009 at the Estonian University of Life Sciences conference centre (Kreutzwaldi 1A, Tartu), Estonia (but I'll be in Seattle and it will be 4:30 am my time!)
Echo chambers (and Filter Bubbles) in Media and Social NetworksPlural (think tank)
Our perception of reality - and of the choices that we have in life - has always been influenced by our surroundings: education, friends, favourite newspaper, Facebook feed etc. On the one hand this allows us to live our values among like-minded people but on the other, it can oversimplify reality and deceive us.
An echo chamber is a group situation where information, ideas and beliefs are amplified or reinforced by transmission and repetition, while different or competing views are censored, disallowed or otherwise under-represented.
This slideshow is summarising pros and cons of Echo Chambers and Filter Bubbles in Media and Social Networks.
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This Gasta posits a strategic approach to integrating AI into HEIs to prepare staff, students and the curriculum for an evolving world and workplace. We will highlight the advantages of working with these technologies beyond the realm of teaching, learning and assessment by considering prompt engineering skills, industry impact, curriculum changes, and the need for staff upskilling. In contrast, not engaging strategically with Generative AI poses risks, including falling behind peers, missed opportunities and failing to ensure our graduates remain employable. The rapid evolution of AI technologies necessitates a proactive and strategic approach if we are to remain relevant.
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2. 04/10/23 13:42
The tyranny of collaborative ideation | by Lars Jerichau | Aug, 2023 | UX Collective
Page 2 of 11
https://uxdesign.cc/the-tyranny-of-collaborative-ideation-d6f40bc33336
50s, science has shown again and again, that when we come up with ideas
together there is a loss in both quantity and quality of the ideas generated.
To be clear: Im providing evidence and reasoning that you’re better off
splitting the group in to individuals when coming up with ideas, not that one
individual alone comes up with better ideas than a whole group. However,
there is significant evidence, and multiple studies, that the accumulated
ideas of X individuals, are better than the ideas of a group of X. (Osborne
1953; Taylor et al. 1958; Diehl & Stroebe 1987; Mullen et al. 1991; Furnham
2000; Nijstad et al. 2007; Girotra et al. 2009 — full litterature list)
The largest study on this, in 1987 by Diehl and Stroebe, collects more than
22 experiments and studies of collaborative ideation. in 18 of them the
individual ideators perform better than the groups — and in the last four,
individuals and pairs of two, performed better than groups. But why is this?
I’ll take you through the researched arguments and answers in the following
sections:
1. How ideas get made
2. The invention of brainstorming
3. Why collaborative thinking stifles ideation
4. Best practices for ideation
This article is the first in a series based on the 2022 master thesis “Solo
ideation in digital tools” at IT University of Copenhagen. Keep up here on
Medium or follow me on LinkedIn. The next articles will cover Solo Ideation
in the Digital Sphere, The History of Pragmatic Creativity, and more. On with
the article!
How Ideas Get Made
3. 04/10/23 13:42
The tyranny of collaborative ideation | by Lars Jerichau | Aug, 2023 | UX Collective
Page 3 of 11
https://uxdesign.cc/the-tyranny-of-collaborative-ideation-d6f40bc33336
The old-school notion of coming up with ideas involves those “aha!”
moments, the lightbulb-over-the-head ideas that seems to strike people at
random. This has of course been demystified, revealing that ideas emerge
when the mind shifts focus from the immediate surroundings, creating room
for new combinations or adaptations of existing information (Rawlinson 1981;
Buzan 1993; De Bono 1995; Couger 1996; Hainsworth 2010; Goldschmidt
2016). Ideas, in essence, is a combination of existing information in new
patterns and creativity is the practical skill one must hone to be better at
creating such patterns.
Edward De Bono (the guy with lateral thinking and the six hats), explains that
our brain generates ideas like the flow of water in a process involving a
passive phase where the brain forms “rivers” of information and an active
phase where it retrospectively understands and interprets the paths these
rivers have taken. I myself like to think of it as a lightning strike; the brain
goes through an unfathomable amount of information, trying to make sense
of the connections it creates, and all of sudden, BOOM!, there is that one
pattern that actually makes sense: it’s an idea.
4. 04/10/23 13:42
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I use a lightning strike as an analogy of coming up with ideas — in an instant our brain seeks out patterns in existing
data and once connected in a way that makes sense, an idea is born.
“Understanding that the cornerstone of new ideas lies in the association
of old ones gives all of us the ability to create idea almost at will”
— Micheal Leboeuf 1982
Designers, and other creatives refine and systematize this skill into a process
formally known as ideation. While not universally labeled, ideation commonly
denotes the generation of ideas within the context of a creative- or design
process. So as the skill to generate ideas comes down to the ability create
and recognize patterns in existing information, the best way to get ideas,
must then be the ways in which we can facilitate and support the flow of
pattern recognition stimuli.
The invention of brainstorming
Brainstorming might be believed to be a group activity; maybe with a
facilitator to moderate, a whiteboard, post-it notes, blackboard or the like,
with the intentions to leave with as many ideas as possible, viable or not
(Nielsen 1997; Rickards 2000; Faure 2004; Rawlinson & Graham 2011) — but
that is not necessarily the case. The term of brainstorm can be traced back
to ad-executive and author Alex Osborn, popularized in his 1953 book
Applied Imagination, in the chapter Creative Collaboration by Groups.
“The early participants dubbed our efforts ‘Brainstorm Sessions’; and
quite aptly so because, in this case, ‘brainstorm’ means using the brain to
storm a creative problem — and to do so in commando fashion, with
each stormer audaciously attacking the same objective”
— Alex Osborn, 1953
The reader might notice the chapter it was written in is called Creative
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Collaboration by Groups and you might say: Aha! See? It IS about
collaboration! But hold your horses. The strategy is laid out in two parts: A)
generating ideas, and B) selecting ideas. Osborne calls this thinking
creatively, and thinking judicially. Much a kin to the terms of divergence and
convergence you might be familiar with. Idea generating is in the diverging
part of the process: we expand possibilities. The converging judicial phase,
is not about generating more ideas or establishing new pattern, but to weed
out non viable ones, and it’s a different skillsets altogether — and not what
this article is about.
In Osborne’s version of Brainstorming, the generating ideas part, is done
mostly alone, and then the second part, the judging and selection of ideas, is
done together. But Osborne recognizes some benefits in coming up with
ideas together. He for examples agrees that, ideas of one participant, can
simulate the associative power of all the other participants. However, he
ultimately comes to the conclusion that the cons outweighs the pros. In
essence, the original brainstorm was a two-part method to come up with
ideas alone and judge them together, not the lets-all-sit-together-process
we’ve been fed for many years. So what are the cons on this collaboration
that outweighs the pros?
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Solo designer staring at a wall of sticky notes
Photo by Per Lööv on Unsplash
Why collaboration stifles ideation
There is three elements in collaborative work that stifles ideation session.
The first two are social issues:
The common hazards of teamwork
The lacking sense of mustness
While the third is of a cognitive nature
Group thinking differ from individual thinking
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The hazards of teamwork
This is the most obvious barrier in collaboration, and hopefully one creative
professionals are actively trying to mitigate. It includes not performing the
brainstorming correctly, behaving rudely, interrupting participants,
steamrolling, and overall bad facilitation. But subtle dynamics plays a part as
well : social dynamics, hierarchies — participants don’t want to present
themselves stupid, misunderstandings in context to mention a few. A study
by Daniel J. Couger, in his 1996 book Creativity and innovation in information
systems organizations, pointed towards three significant social dynamics
that stifled collaborative ideation:
1) Fear of social disapproval
2) The effect of authority hierarchy
3) Domination of the session by a few very vocal persons
- Daniel Couger 1996
These will be recognized by most practitioners of ideation, and professionals
will be able to mitigate some of them, to some degree. But the hazards of
teamwork are not the only ones at play.
The lacking sense of mustness
Osborn describes this as missing a “mustness” whenever we are in a social
setting — As the storytelling ad-executive he was, Osborne paints a picture
of the “mustness” of solo thinking:
“If you were alone in your cabin, heard a deafening crash, looked out of
the porthole and saw an iceberg, felt the floor sinking beneath you —
your intensity of interest would drive you so hard and so fast that it would
force you to think up something to do. On the other hand, if there were
two of us in that cabin, we might just look at each other blankly and wait
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for the other to suggest something.”
- Alex Osborn, 1953
I myself view this as not committing to thinking up solutions because it’s a
smaller cognitive load to hope someone else thinks of the brilliant idea,
instead of doing it ourselves. Perhaps a designer’s version of the bystander
effect, allowing us to rely on others to do the work, creatively or otherwise.
Group thinking differ from individual thinking
Remember the analogy that generating ideas is sort of forming lightning
bolts in the brain? Well, take a look at John Adairs 1996 visualizations of
individual thinking versus group thinking:
An INDIVIDUAL, when thinking, is like a person crossing a river on stones, jumping toand fro. It’s an untidy but
orderly process, using all the meta-functions.
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To take a GROUP across the river you must build a bridge with three pillars. As you’ll see, these pillars draw mainly
on one of the meta-functions, so it helps to be able to separate them
While not explicitly calling out creativity, the visualizations can be
contextualized in collaborative ideation. If group thinking is structured, it will
be in contradiction to the premise of idea generation as laid previously — as
such individual thinking is more suited ideation. In summary, Brainstorming
has become what psychology professor Paul Paulus described as:
“…a complex process where people are trying to listen, think, add,
collaborate, build. It’s cumbersome, it’s difficult psychologically, and
people don’t do it very well”
Chapter takeaways
Hazards of teamwork can be mitigated, but not eliminated
There is such a thing as the Creative’s bystander effect
Group thinking is ill-suited for the process of idea generation
Best practices for ideation
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Photo by Mehdi MeSSrro on Unsplash
Previously I’ve touched on why collaboration counters idea generation. In
this final chapter, I will give some insights in what the literature says about
supporting idea generation instead.
So how do you get the most out of ideation when doing it alone? In
researching creativity and ideation, I have some recommendations to follow
to achieve effective solo ideation.
1. Stimulate pattern recognition; It’s all about the instant pattern
recognition in the seemingly random chaos of one’s brain — the
lightning strike. Christian Kohls’ 2015 experiments found that
tools/techniques that emphasize holistic overview, directional flow and
impulse stimuli won out. Mand maps, word associations games and
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sketching comes to mind.
2. Utilize external, preferably vaguely relevant, prompts; In the field it
has been established that even random words as prompts, will increase
ideation effectiveness. But more recent research (Belski 2014 and Shen
2018) studied the difference between no prompt, random prompt,
vague prompts and hard prompts. The study showed getting prompts
vaguely related to your subject matter yielded the best and most ideas.
3. Avoid judicial thinking; In the same study, hard prompts saw a
decrease in idea quality and quantity. Hard prompts being almost
ready-made solutions and suggestions. The reasoning is that the
participants allocate brain power for evaluation and analysis, instead of
getting new ideas. In short, they started judging ideas, instead of
generating ideas.
4. Avoid fixating; A common problem any creative practitioner will have
encountered. In 2014 Youman’s studies found three forms of fixation in
creativity: Unconscious adherence, Conscious blocking and Intentional
resistance. Common for the three, is that the practitioner’s locking on
to particular patterns, not breaking them or moving beyond certain
ideas or notions. The remedies for each include some version of
inspiration from external sources.
This concludes this article on the tyranny of collaborative ideation. I hope the
scientific evidence, and my arguments and reasoning have swayed you
towards solo ideation. ‘Stay tuned for more.