Consider the problem of reducing vandalism in factory lunchrooms. One group member believes that the essence of the problem objective is “destruction,” writes it down on a note, and passes it to the person on his right. The person receiving that word then might write down “defacement.” This person then has two notes containing the words “destruction” and “defacement.” They read these words aloud to the other group members
and the group uses them to help spark ideas. For instance, the combination,
“destruction-defacement” might suggest an idea of creating a lunchroom that appears to be defaced, but is done so in an artistic way. Another idea might be to place pictures of all the workers in the lunch room with the hope they wouldn’t destroy the room (from “defacement”). Or the word, “destruction” might trigger an idea to completely destroy the current lunch room and invite the workers to participate in its reconstruction. Finally,
“defacement” might suggest literally taking the faces away from the lunch room and eliminating it altogether.
Exaggerate That
Background
Have you ever stretched the truth? Come on, now—be truthful. Most people have exaggerated something, at some time in their lives, even if it’s only a slight distortion. Exaggerations not only make us feel better, they also can add excitement to our interactions. The more extreme and vivid our exaggerations, the more attention they will attract.
Each instance of truth stretching is a stimulus. And stimuli can help generate ideas. There must be the makings of an idea generation activity here somewhere! And there is. It’s known as Exaggerated Objectives (Olson, 1980). With it, you generate ideas by listing problem criteria, exaggerating them in any way possible, and then using the exaggerations as stimuli to prompt ideas.
Taken From : Pfeiffer 101 Activities for Teaching Creativity
