GENERATING CREATIVE QUESTIONS
What Is It?
Creative questions should be grounded in the original design brief and convening question, but they then transform based on the research and systems thinking activities.
Creative questions should resonate deeply with the group’s experiences, and provide direction, hopes, stretched boundaries, and launch points for generating many new ideas in a new solution space. Often the initial convening question breaks into fractals of more specific creative questions as a result of the action research and systems thinking work.
When Is It Used?
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To get to the real problem to be solved.
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To create a potent starting point to generate ideas.
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To disrupt the current system.
How Is It Used?
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Take a moment to centre and quiet your active, analytical mind. This could be a short meditation, moving into silence, some physical movement. Allow yourself to engage your heart and will, along with your mind, and sense into what is trying to emerge.
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Formulate creative questions beginning with “how might we...” or “what if...” based on intriguing insights, user experiences, and inspirations. Use this formula: “How might we (action verb) for a (user) who (insight) and/or with (need)”.
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Aim to have your cake and eat it too - find the right level of tension and potency for the creative question to stimulate creativity.
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Take an unreasonable stance to stimulate radical, rather than incremental, innovation.
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Pick the right level of abstraction.
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Make sure not to include or imply a solution in the creative question.