September 12, 2017
Newsletter

Let’s Talk About:

Finding the Spark

Where do good ideas come from? While there’s a great deal of research into the matter, it’s not clear where or how the brain finds that special spark – and it’s different for everyone. We’re in the business of building great technology paired with excellent design, copy, and research. However, its value is lost if you aren’t building on a great idea.

Paul McCartney has said many of the Beatles' greatest hits were created by following a template, a pattern of working with each other to build out their songs. Similarly at Viget, we try to follow a process to get our ideas out there, good or bad, working collaboratively to create our masterpiece.

This process usually involves deep research into our client and user needs, in-depth kickoffs to understand the problem at hand, and heads-down exploration. Even with these patterns and processes in place, we sometimes turn to new methods to find that next great idea.

Read About Florence and Working Through Your Bad Ideas


Community Thoughts on Finding the Spark...

  1. 1. How to Generate More Good Ideas “...to have more ideas, we first need more experiences to draw from. Then we need to make use of all that inspiration by having more ideas—good and bad.As Seth Godin says, “you can’t have good ideas unless you’re willing to generate a lot of bad ones.”
  2. 2. Using Brainwriting for Rapid idea Generation “In my experience, the number of ideas generated from brainwriting often exceeds what you’d expect from face-to-face brainstorming because you’ve reduced anxiety somewhat, followed a parallel process in which a dozen people may add items simultaneously, and reduced the amount of extraneous talk that happens during brainstorming, which takes time away from idea generation.”
  3. 3. Your elusive creative genius Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses — and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all of us “have” a genius. It’s a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk.
  4. 4. New Visual Essay: Back to the Cave “One of my tricks is to start a new Keynote presentation and drop in images and quotes that feel loosely related or simply ones that I feel drawn to. Images can speak to me on this phantasmal level, but text rarely does (even though I love them both).”
  5. 5. How Good Ideas Are Formed “By thinking on questions (e.g. What would yellow taste like?), trying intriguing things (e.g. Quickly doodle what you see in front of you now, but upside down), or embracing the unexpected (e.g. Right now try to find someone who shares the same birthday as you and compare your life story), we can stimulate modes of thinking that abruptly introduce new or different concepts at once.”

Improving the Way We Shop Online is a research Exploration that attempts to bridge the gap between physical and digital shopping experiences.


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