Decision Making: Social and Creative Dimensions by Carl Martin Allwood, Marcus Selart

Decision making has been a classic topic of academic research and applied practice. This edited volume by Allwood and Selart continues important recent trends. First, the chapters extend the traditional conceptualization of decision making as an individual cognitive process that is structured in space and time. Second, the book collects multidisciplinary, multimethod, and multicountry voices and approaches, mixing theoretical and practical issues, conceptual frameworks, and empirical studies. The editors state the major goal as "to give recognition to the fact that human decision making typically occurs in changing, dynamic, social contexts, and that researchers interested in decision making in a social context therefore will benefit by considering the relation between creativity and decision making" (p. 10).

Improvisation is not necessarily creativity. It's just being easy with the tools dixit Birsher.

And so what would I say: being easy with tools allows more spontaneous thoughts, and reinventing the tool is not necessary to reinvent the artistic expression.
My definition of an artist is very broad and embraces theories like Dubuffet formulated, everyone is an artist as long as everyone expresses himself or at least is able to express himself through any activity as long as it is guided by a personal might, if there is expression or creation there is an artist following his insight.

World has become more complex, and more people express themselves through easy learning and affordable appliances. So then much more ideas emerge from this complexity.

Why so few researches have been conducted upon creativity?(Issue discussed in the article the common thread on creativity)
Hypothesis: Until not so far ago the education of society was guided by a bigger need of intelligence than of creativity, the pattern of a traditional society praised the force of one model from which, through competition, an elite could emerge. Creativity presented a danger of reforging the society attacked in its first basis, its criteria of judgement of good and bad.

Submerged by human expression?
The world is now guided by economic rules, and the conditions for survival are themselves kept by creativity and brightness of ideas. Considered to the global scale and compounded with the new abilities for masses to come up with ideas and to display them, it leads to a submersion of human creations, and possibly fastens the human ideas evolution?

Ulla-Maaria Mutanen's lecture

from University of Helsinki, Center for Activity, Theory and Developmental Work Research
This presentation discussed future directions in professional design by challenging the current conceptions of production and consumption. The main indication is that organisations that wish to innovate and foster creativity need to conceive products that exist simultaneously both in physical and online form, make designers play with users, and support crafting and voluntary development outside businesses.

New ideas emerge on fringes, group of amateurs...
Why ordinary people create things? The following points are her answaer to that question

Why? no pressure, no fear of failure
Why ordinary people want to make stuff?
answer in 11 points:

1Get satisfaction of being able to create things (K. Marx: human become themselves only by producing things)

2The things people have made themselves have magic powers. They have hidden meanings that other people cannot see.

3The thing people make they usually want to keep and update. Crafting is not against consumption, it is against throwing away.

4People seek recognition for the things they have made. Primarly it comes from their friends and family.

5People who believe they are creating genially things are looking broader.
(blogs, chat-rooms, web-portals, photo sharing services)

6Work inspires work. Seeing what other people have made generates new ideas and designs.

7Essential for crafting are tools, which are accessible, portable and easy to learn.

Quoted reference: Democratizing innovation E. von Hippel

architects or designers? Who is the more organised?

The question started to be debated two weeks ago while we were presenting our exploration themes. Arriving here, coming from architecture and having seen only messy agencies during my internships, I discovered the gap between the vision we had on both sides of the work method of the other one. Each side thinks the other one is more organised and the process method is more rigorous. Without doubt designers win, in architecture we've never heard about any protocol in any school.

5Ws and an H (What? Where? When? Who? Why? How?)

Tested on the problem: How to help people who are affraid to go to the doctor? Released by the bench of banana.
Sometimes a little bit too superfluous, hopefully the bench of banana carried by Pal helped us to redefine the W of what we were speaking: Who is affraid of the doctor or who is the doctor who frightens his patients? It was a not too bad solution o eplore the xplore the problem as it didn't take too much time. But I am not sure this method was the most appropriate, I'd rather tested the be the problem method for such an issue.

Mother and father of invention

Necessity must be the mother of invention, but play must be the father.
Roger Von Oech

this sentence could be inspired by every method of creativity we tried until now. Discussing about our impressions, most of us seemed to focuse on the linking power of a method like the cards, as games do. Games and play also admit a kind of freedom, free from the weight of reality.

changing opinion about brainstorming

The first class of exploring creativity was dedicated to the combination of brainwriting and brainstorming. I must confess I was reluctant about this method I always found uneffecive in my passed experiences. At first I was upset to see that we could spend a whole course talking and trying it. The day before, during my ID course Daniel Senn presented this method too, with diagrams and other truths about it. It seemed to me a lot of talks about something which is already a kind of talking, and the brainstorming we mae during the class didn't conviced me in thinking it was an efficient idea runner.
These times are very far now. Thanks to practicing it in a new country and in a new discipline (I come from architecture and study now interaction design), I respected the basic rules, because of a poor english and out of respect for those who knew more about design. It was suddenly very difficult to say spontaneously some critical remarks. By staying in the background I could see how useful and welcome it is, at the beginning of ideas generation, that everyone can express without reserve even unrealistic ideas. Although I stay dubtful about the capacity of brainstorming in improving the brightness of ideas, I recognize its use in tightening a work group and making everyone self-confident, which is to me one of the most important aspect.

Ps:I think one other reason of my misunderstanding of the importance of this method in creative works was that many things in french are called brainstorming. It give a more trendy aspect to a simple discussion. But the problem with a discussion is the lack of clear rules and it involves, I think, too much emotion, bringing sometimes to completely unstructured and painful workmeeting.