Action Research for Creative Thinkers

During a workshop led by Brian Johnson, my classmates and I got to explore action research and put it into practice.

We were given a simple brief: to brainstorm ideas for a fictitious client who enjoys growing vegetables but lives in an apartment without a garden.

Through brainstorming, the team came up with some good ideas. However, they felt rather conventional and none them had that sense of innovation and uniqueness to them. For example, building a greenhouse on the roof or a vertical garden on the balcony wall.

The next step was to look at our ideas through reversal, also known as negative brainstorming. I found this part interesting because it meant we had to detect any flaws in our ideas and come up with ways to cut out those flaws. This is how the idea of a user guide app came about. Recognising the client's limited knowledge of gardening, I proposed that a user guide app could be helpful in keeping the client well-informed about plant care and maintenance.

Now provocation was the most odd but interesting part of the workshop for me. This is where our ideas became unique and more interesting. It required us to make statements and throw ideas around that were almost ridiculous, but it allowed us to take a step back and realise that these ideas might actual not be that ridiculous after all. We somehow went from building a vertical garden in our clients balcony, to creating an immersive garden simulation. We took the idea of user guide app and turned it into a controller, in which the client could take care of his virtual plants and gain knowledge on gardening. We also thought about the possibility of creating sensory gloves or boots to allow the client to get the sensation of touching the plants.

Overall, I think this was a great workshop and definitely helped me realise how sometimes I shut down my ideas too quickly because they are “too complex” or “ridiculous”. However, sometimes that could be the best start to a great idea!

Team 1 during the brainstorming stage