21/04/21

People often limit their creativity by continually adding new features to a design rather than removing existing ones

 

 

 

 

 

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Read:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/our-brain-typically-overlooks-this-brilliant-problem-solving-strategy/

Glossary

  • hunch – a guess based on intuition rather than fact
  • to augment – to increase, to make larger
  • propensity – a natural inclination or preference
  • wobbly – unsteady

 

 

True or False?

 

1. The skill of riding a bike is more easily acquired with stabilizers rather than with a pedalless balance bike.

2. The idea of removing traffic lights and road signs from cities doesn’t oppose conventional traffic design.

3. Leidy Klotz and Gabrielle Adams had an idea based on feeling that when faced with a problem, people’s first instinct is to augment rather than to remove.

4. Experiments showed that subtractive solutions required less effort to think up when participants had to simultaneously juggle another task.

5. It is known that organizations have an aversion to complexity.

 ANSWERS: 1.F; 2F; 3T; 4F; 5F

Practice Makes Perfect

Use the words in bold below to fill in the gaps in the extracts of Want to be more creative? Go for a walk. Make sure their grammatical form is correct!

In order to check your answers go to:

 

(to) come up              implication        (to) seat              variety                 (to) average

boost                    (to) pick              residue                alternate           (to) survey         (to) go with

(…) We ran four studies with a 1. ……… of people. You were either walking indoors or outdoors. (…) One of the tests we used for creativity was 2. ……… uses. Your job is to 3. ………..  with as many other ways to use common everyday objects as you can think of. (…) So people came up with as many ideas as they could, and we had to decide: is this creative or not?  The definition of creativity that a lot of people 4. ………. is “appropriate novelty.” For something to be appropriate, it has to be realistic. (…) So for us, it had to be appropriate first, and then for novelty, nobody else in the entire population that we 5. ……….. could have said it. (…) You either did this test while you were 6. ……….. or while you were walking on a treadmill. (…) There were three groups. The first group sat first and then sat again for the second test. The second group sat first and then did the second test while walking on a treadmill. The third group walked on the treadmill first, and then they sat. The two groups that sat together for the first test 7. ………. about 20 creative ideas per person. The group that was walking on the treadmill did almost twice as well. The people who were sitting and then went on the treadmill got a 8. ……… from walking. The people who were walking on the treadmill still had a 9. ……….. effect of the walking, and they were still creative afterwards. So the 10. ………. of this is that you should go for a walk before your next big meeting and just start brainstorming right away (having 11. ……..  your topic first).

 ANSWERS: 1. variety 2. alternate 3. come up; 4. go with; 5. surveyed 6. seated; 7. averaged; 8. boost; 9. residue; 10. implication; 11. picked

 Discuss:

  • Do you consider yourself a creative person?
  • Is it easy for you to come up with new ideas and think out of the box?
  • When do your best ideas come?
  • Do you like making things? Have you ever created something from scratch?
  • Do you like brainstorming meetings at work? How do they make you feel?

 

 

 

Explore it more to create your own teaching-learning experience!

21 Ways to Inspire More Creativity in 2021
Strengthen your creativity by exercising creative habits.

 

Read:

https://www.inc.com/natalie-nixon/21-ways-to-inspire-more-creativity-in-2021.html

 

 

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