{"id":1149,"date":"2009-11-19T17:35:40","date_gmt":"2009-11-19T16:35:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bluehaired.com\/?p=1149"},"modified":"2015-08-05T23:48:48","modified_gmt":"2015-08-05T21:48:48","slug":"creative-sessions-playing-with-serious-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bluehair.co\/corner\/2009\/11\/creative-sessions-playing-with-serious-stuff\/","title":{"rendered":"Creative Sessions: Playing with serious stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\"Creative<\/a>A creative session is a gathering of people who, following some steps and rules shaped by a facilitator (or organizer), let their creativity loose. Working together, in one or more teams, they eventually generate ideas for the subject matter in question. The session doesn\u2019t need to have very strict guidelines in order to work. As long as it is well organized most likely creativity and inspiration sooner or later emerge (Grudin & Pruitt, 2004).<\/p>\n

I have participated in a couple of creative sessions and always found them extremely useful as a means to let your mind go free and be creative in solving problems or in generating ideas and so I wanted to share with you the process that I followed while organizing one such activity during my Design for Interaction MSc. graduation project<\/a> in which we were dealing with emotions in hotel environments.<\/p>\n

As a kick-off for the conceptualization phase of the project, I decided to organize a creative session in an attempt to generate as many initial ideas as possible from a non-biased team of designers and non designers. These ideas would later be used as inspiration for the development of concepts that meet the design guidelines defined earlier in the process.<\/p>\n

It is generally recommended that the facilitator\/organizer of the session is not directly involved in the project at hand<\/strong>, in order to avoid its knowledge and insights of the project\u2019s goal to interfere with the creative process; therefore a colleague was contacted to take the leading role in the organization of the session (my friend Ricardo Mejia<\/a>, who by now is an expert on the subject).<\/p>\n

It is also recommended to make a video of the session<\/strong> so that you have a record to come back to interesting things that might have happened during the creative process.<\/p>\n

\"All<\/a>
All six participants<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Setting and participants<\/h3>\n

In an attempt to create an atmosphere which would allow the creativity of the participants to flow freely, it was decided to hold the session in an informal and inspiring setting. The session took place at night in an apartment, along
\nwith some drinks and snacks for the participants and plenty of blank paper, color markers, sticky notes and various\u00a0 other materials that could be used in a creative way. The whole activity lasted around 2 \u00bd hours.<\/p>\n

The participants involved were:<\/p>\n