Problem Area Techniques

Image 1, Creative Problem Solving Model. (Creative Skills Handbook, 2019). 

Goal Orientation Technique

Image 2, Goal Orientation Picture. (Gocus, 2014). 

The goal orientation technique was used during my creative skills showcase. Personally, I believe it is a very useful technique, and it was also a succesful showcase. When using this technique it is important to ask oneself: "What exactly is my goal?". By having a clear description and having a specific goal in mind, it becomes possible to address any issues that may arise with this specific problem definition. Due to this, the next step in the goal orientation technique, is to always start and find solutions for the problem, and they usually automatically begin to emerge once the goal has been defined clearly (Creative Skills Handbook, 2019).

Strengths

• Allows you to pin-point your goal and, from the beginning, be able to have some solutions in mind.

• There are no boundaries, which means that one can dream and think big.

Weaknesses

• The technique is a bit vague, since there is no specific guidance to find the goal. 

• The "no boundaries", can be a strength but also a weakness, since you might think too big, and potentially overpromise to yourself but also to the client. 

(Creative Skills Handbook, 2019).

For this specific showcase, my group and I organised a mini olympiade, including 5 stations. Each station needed to be visited by each group, once. The groups moved around counter clockwise, and had 4 minutes to explore the tasks at each station. The stations involved individual thinking, since every person had to think for themselves. After completing the stations, the groups needed to come together and discuss their findings and conclude, based on the findings, what their companies current image was. Therefore, there was both individual as well as group thinking. Each station had their own topic: 

Station 1 - Discover your spirit animal 

Station 2 - Pick a motivational quote 

Station 3 - Pick a group theme song 

Station 4 - Choose the color that you identify with 

Station 5 - Select a picture that fits best with your group

(Personal Communication, 2019). 

The warm-ups that were included for our showcase can be found here. Below is a picture of my team and me on the left side in the bottom. 

Ladder of Abstraction 

The ladder of abstraction technique was not presented during our creative skills sessions. Nevertheless, it is still an important technique, which might be useful to some. It is part of the problem are in the CPS model, and the starting point of the technique is to define the problem definition. After defining this, the technique is literally a latter. The questions you should ask yourself is “Why do I want to achieve this?”, by moving up of the ladder. Then, the question: “What is stopping me from achieving this?”, should be asked, when descending the ladder (Creative Skills Handbook, 2019).

Image 3, Ladder of Abstraction. (Creative Skills Handbook, 2019).

Strengths 

• Pin-pointing why you want to achieve this, makes you motivated. 

• Provides multiple solutions. 

• Defining what is stopping you from achieving this, allows one to discover potential pitfalls and issues, that could come up when wanting to achieve the problem definition, and then work them out and potentially prevent them.

Weaknesses

• No guidance to find what is stopping form achieving this. 

• This technique is not for everyone, since some might not be able to see what is stopping them from achieving this.

Wishful thinking

Wishful thinking is a very creative technique, because it requires you to think outside of the box. When using the wishful thinking technique, you will ask yourself what the most ideal solution for the problem would be. This showcase was organised by the group H5O. (Personal Communication, 2019).

A definition of wishful thinking by the urban dictionary is that it is basically daydreaming, and wishing or imagining something that isn't even realistic (Urban Dictionary, 2013). 

Image 4, Fish in a Bowl. (Bishop, 2017). 

There are 4 and a half steps to wishful thinking: 

1. State the question, goal, situation or problem 
2. Assume anything is possible - there are no boundaries
3. Using fantasy, make statement such as:"What I really want to do is..." or "if I could choose any answer to this question, it would be 
4. Examine each fantasy and their statements and, using this as a stimulation, return to reality and make statements such as: "Although I really cannot do that, I can do..." OR "It seems impractical to do that, but I believe we can accomplish the same thing by..."
5. Repeat Step 3 and 4, if necessary. 

(Personal Communication, 2019). 

Strengths

• Forces you to think outsides of the box 

• To be open about ideas you would not normally be open to 

• Understand exactly what you want done, because you will be able to pinpoint what you want 

Weaknesses

• You can get carried away with what you are actually trying to accomplish 

• It is difficult to scale something back in a realistic and ordinary fashion, because once you have gone big, it is difficult to go back. 

(Personal Communication, 2019). 

For the wishful technique showcase, which was organised by the group H5O, we received a scenario from the group. This scenario stated that we had received a client and that there was very poor communication between the client and our group, and that there were several miscommunications and issues. With the help of the wishful thinking technique, we had to try and come up with a solution for fixing the relationship (Personal Communication, 2019). The warm-up for the wishful technique session can be found here.  

Redefinition 

This technique will be applied, once you have applied one of the techniques already mentioned above. Redefinition involves nothing other than the conscious formulation of a new definition of the problem.
As such, this technique will be the last step in the problem area and will be the starting point for the ideas stage.