Category: Creativity
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Re-Learn to Imagine Challenge!
The Dot and The Line activity was created by Parnes, Noller & Biondi (1977) as part of their Creative Problem Solving programs. Since 2021, I have been inviting students, colleagues, and clients to complete this activity to help them better understand their thought patterns and uncover internal barriers that hinder their imagination and creative potential. Imagination…
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New Chapter: Imagination for Emotional Well-being
For almost 25 years, my career has exclusively centered in the design space. Through my work, I have led design higher education, brought social science and anthropology research closer to design practice and academia, and contributed with a more expansive way to approach information design. The three books I have authored and co-authored and multiple…
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The Vicious Cycle of Well-Being, Creativity & AI
Last week, I came across a recent MIT study designed to investigate the impact of AI in learning environments. Based on the assigned problem-solving approach, 54 adults were divided into three groups to complete multiple creative tasks in four sessions. In the last session, participants were placed on the opposite group – so those who…
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New Challenges to Teaching Imagination for Well-Being
Teaching my Imagination, Well-Being, & Happiness elective course left me with many learnings. On the one hand, it was beneficial for a few students. One of them realized “how valuable imagination can be” — not just for design work, but for navigating life with a little more softness and flexibility.” Their evolution was documented in…
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Why AI is not Creative
Conversations about whether artificial intelligence (AI) will replace people’s creativity and related jobs have intensified and become a concern among art and design students. This is why as part of my Imagination, Well-Being & Happiness course, students grapple with these ideas: Is AI creative? Could it replace designers’ imagination and creativity? As an experiment, I…
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Imagination, Well-Being, & Happiness Course
What is imagination? What role does it have in mental well-being and inner development? How does imagination affect self-worth and combat loneliness and social disconnection? How does imagination and creativity relate? What is individual creativity? What is social imagination? How does AI impact our capacity to imagine? Is imagining a future and a better life…
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Learning about Inner Growth Competences
Last month, I attended the Inner Development Goals (IDGs) summit in Stockholm, Sweden. I came across the IDGs in May and I immediately connected with their aim and purpose: promote individual inner growth to build a healthier society. The IDGs initiative was first introduced in 2020 at the Stockholm School of Economics in response to…
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Imagination, the bridge between inner growth and outer change
Finding purpose in life, accepting who we are, and expressing our true feelings and thoughts – to name a few – are examples of struggles that many people face every day. Many of these struggles have even been exacerbated by Covid, leading to increased loneliness, social disconnection, and other mental health conditions. However, in Western…
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Pillars for teaching Imagination and Creativity
While everyone has the innate ability to be creative, teaching deliberate creativity can be challenging. Nowadays, there is a vast amount of literature about imagination, creativity, and related techniques. However, gaining familiarity with the theory and research studies is only half the equation. Ongoing misconceptions, myths, and lack of clarity about the topics – imagination…
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Deliberate Creativity Workshop Day 4: Materializing Ideas
On the last day of the Deliberate Creativity Workshop, participants gave life to their ideas engaging in four different activities:Visualizing, Visioning, Building, and Storytelling. Visualizing. Each participant created a collage of their own idea using magazines to transform words into visuals. This exercise was followed by an energetic speed-dating feedback session – another of my…
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Deliberate Creativity Workshop Day 3: Applying Imagination
The focus of the third day of the Deliberate Creativity Workshop was to start applying the concepts discussed during the first two days: imagination, creative thinking, and divergent and convergent thinking. As in Days 1 and 2, we began with a warm up exercise. This time we used a modified version of the exercise “This…
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Deliberate Creativity Workshop Day 2: (Re)Learning to Imagine
As in Day 1, the second day of the Deliberate Creativity Workshop began with a warm-up. This time the focus was on being imaginative and creative through the body: working on teams of four, participants had to explain a given concept only acting it out and without speaking. To team up participants, I borrowed the…
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