Synectics!
Synectics have been on my mind ever since I read the discussion between John Chris Jones and GK Vanpatter at NextD. It’s best known as, ‘making the familiar strange and the strange familiar’ and it is the result of decades of research by William JJ Gordon which culminated into his book Synectics: The Development of Creative Capacity in 1961.
The basis of Synectics is trying to draw connections from seemingly unrelated topics to drive creative response. I know I find a lot of times when I’m brainstorming on my own it’s difficult to come up with anything that deviates from the normal conventions. It’s always attractive to follow a linear thought process (and faster) but it can be more rewarding to follow a process that promotes more lateral thinking. For example, if I simply do a competitive analysis I might do some hybrid of a couple of concepts and try to mix some new type of element but it’s not really a substantial leap forward other than keeping on par with competitors.
In many situations this method is all that time will permit but if you are trying to rethink complex problems, on paper, Synectics looks like a good way to stimulate thinking. I think a lot people’s creative process integrate some of the elements from Synetics but actually formalizing the process can be helpful in a group setting.
Some key tools when using Synectics are:
1. Subtract: Remove parts of your current approach, or simplify it.
2. Repeat: Duplicate parts of it, or significantly increase resources so that you can take existing approaches to a new level;
3. Combine: Mix existing approaches with other approaches;
4. Add: Make existing approaches bigger or stronger, or add other elements;
5. Transfer: Move existing approaches into different situations, and look at how they would change to cope with these approaches;
6. Empathize: Put yourself in the minds of your customers, or pretend that you are the problem: From this perspective, how would you do things differently?
7. Animate: Bring the problem to life. Think about it as a living thing;
8. Superimpose: Overlay the situation with new meanings or ideas, possibly randomly generated (see random input);
9. Change Scale: Think about what would happen if you radically expanded the scale of the problem, or if you reduced it substantially;
10. Substitute: Switch out and replace elements of your current approach. Switch in parts of alternative approaches;
11. Fragment: Take the problem or your current approach apart. If you solve some parts of the problem, does this help solve others? Or can other people help you solve parts more effectively?
12. Isolate: And is there value in only looking at part of the problem? Are people really that concerned about other parts?
13. Distort: Change the “shape” of your current product, solution or service: Extend it or stretch it, think about it as a different, distorted shape;
14. Disguise: Think about whether you can eliminate the problem by hiding it or camouflaging it (in some cases this may be a legitimate solution);
15. Contradict: Think about doing the opposite of what you want to do (for example, how you would make the problem worse?), then reverse this;
16. Parody: Think about what you’d ridicule about your problem or solution. See if this changes the context or suggests alterations;
17. Prevaricate: Fantasize about your service. Think about what it would be like in your wildest dreams;
18. Analogize: Think about analogies for your product or service, and what you can compare it to in other disciplines. How do people deal with analogous problems? (We’ll look at this in more detail later…)
19. Hybridize: Think about what would happen if you crossed your current approach with something wildly different. Does this suggest any ideas?
20. Metamorphose: Think about how your product or service will be affected if current trends continue – will the problem get worse, or will it fade away in significance?
21. Symbolize: How can you strip your product or service back to its bare essentials? How can you convert it into something this is immediately easy to grasp?
22. Mythologize: Taking this further, how could you give it symbolic, “iconic” or “mythological” status?
On a completely unrelated note I leave you with a concept called Teddy by Takeo Igarashi that was presented at SIGGRAPH in 1999. (Creates a 3D object from your 2D lines)