Kalideascope

The Kalideascope is a model that engineers (and other humans) can use to understand idea generation as a structured process. It is concerned solely with the process of generating ideas and not the evaluation of these ideas (for that see establishing tests).

This extensive motif provides a framework of creativity that sits alongside other processes in the Pattern Book, forming the foundation for Pattern 04. It is based on an understanding that idea generation is a complex process that unfolds over time. The Kalideascope is regenerative-ambivalent — but combined with other motifs in the pattern book, it creates fertile ground for new patterns to emerge.

What is an idea?

An idea is simply a new pattern – formed by mixing existing patterns in the mind.

For example, when nineteenth-century French gardener Joseph Monier wanted stronger flowerpots, he combined brittle concrete with an iron mesh to create reinforced concrete. His idea was combining two existing materials to create something new.

A material from one context used in another. A familiar form reformed. Applying emerging technology to an existing field. These new combinations are the foundations of creativity.

This perspective on idea generation gives us two things to focus on in the creative process:

• What patterns do we need as inputs?
• How do we form new combinations?

From the Pattern Book for Regenerative Design.

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Introducing the Kalideascope

In ‘A Technique for Producing Ideas’¹ James Webb Young describes creativity in turning a kaleidoscope. The coloured fragments represent the existing host of patterns in our minds. Turning the kaleidoscope mixes them to create new patterns — new ideas.

We call this idea generator a Kalideascope² It gives us three clear steps for a robust creative process:

Building the Kalideascope — creating a shared space for idea generation.
Filling the Kalideascope — gathering diverse inputs.
Turning the Kalideascope — making new connections.

Stage 1 – Building the Kalideascope

This first stage is about creating the space in which your creative inputs can be gathered, displayed and engaged with.

Engineers (and other humans) often collect data for quality management — securely stored and well organized. But for creativity, visibility matters more than storage. These inputs need to be seen.

Think of detectives: clues are pinned on the walls, not buried in files. We don’t always know what’s going to be important, or in what order – we need to see it all to spot the patterns.

A display board covered with inputs has the potential to fill our field of vision. Yet, many engineers (and other humans) work using a laptop or a single-screen computer. That’s about a twentieth of our input field (and about a hundredth if we are working on our phones).

To support data gathering we need a bigger view. That could be a wall, a pinboard, a large table or at the very least a double-page spread in a notebook. If you are not co-located then use an online whiteboard. It’s less ideal but it gives you a focus for shared attention and the potential for new patterns to jump out.

Building the Kalideascope starts the creative process by preparing to gather all our inputs in a way that allows us to cast our view across them.

Stage 2 – Filling the Kalideascope

Once our creative working space is set up, we can begin to populate it. Prime the process by sorting content under three headings:

• Information — facts relating to the project.
• Questions — open-ended questions that invite further exploration.
• Ideas — early possibilities and insights.

From these starting points, inputs can be drawn from two categories of sources: in the moment, and over time.

Kalideascope inputs in the moment

These are potential sources for inputs to the creative process that we can gather at the start of a project. In the Pattern Book there is a particular focus on inputs from the system we are designing in.

• The brief — what the client says they want. The client doesn’t have to be another person; it could be you. The importance is to get some input from the person who is commissioning the work.
• The site — no matter whether it is a building, a website or a process, your creative work will be ‘situated’ somewhere. Go to that place and absorb whatever inputs you can.
• The system — use the Juice the System to gather information, questions and ideas about the system you are working with.
• Colleagues and collaborators — their ideas and experiences can be important inputs to your creative thinking.
• Precedents — similar or relevant work that you have done before. Nothing is new — allow for iteration and repurposing.
• What comes to mind — our brains can’t help but generate ideas as we work. So we should make the most of the creative capacity and treat these initial ideas as inputs to our creative process. Capture these thoughts and feed them into the process.
• When we were least expecting — notice what other thoughts come to mind when you were least expecting. Our brain and our body whir away working on problems and spotting patterns when we least expect it → see Multiple Internal Intelligences.

Some of the inputs sound obvious, but systematically working through this list can strengthen the creative process.

Kalideascope inputs over time

These inputs build up gradually, some by accident and some by design. They become a stock of inputs we can draw upon in the creative process.

• Deep observation of place — long-term attention to people and ecosystems helps us sense how this complex system is behaving. These aren’t quick desk studies, instead they take time and curiosity.
• Outside interests — the combination of things that interest you outside your day job are unique to you. No one else has this specific range of interests. Bring it into the creative process.
• Professional palette — like a musician practising scales or a painter preparing their colours, gather the standard patterns of your craft so they can readily form the building blocks of new ideas.
• Example projects — As you find good reference projects, keep a record of them. It might be a detail, something that catches your eye, or something that doesn’t look right. If we capture these examples as we go, it is much easier to draw upon them when we need them.
• Conversations with people — go and talk and listen to a diverse range of people and pay attention to what they say → see Catalytic Style.

Our brains are always gathering. Autosave is on. But curation of these inputs matters — sketch, write, storyboard, map to make them accessible when we need to be creative.

Trading posts and the diversity of inputs

Throughout history, trading posts have been centres of innovation because they have been places where diverse cultures have met. According to Csikszentmihalyi³ cultures are collections of ideas that already exist, which represent domains of input to the creative process. The greater the diversity of cultural inputs, the greater the range of possibilities in the creative process.

If your inputs all come from similar sources — people with the same background, experiences and cultural references — think about how you can expand your field of input.

Stage 3 – Turning the Kalideascope

Once you’ve built your Kalideascope and filled it, the third stage is to turn it — intentionally forming new connections between these inputs.

Ideas often start emerging as soon as we start a project, but creative thinking can often get stuck due to:

• Cognitive ease — when we prefer an existing idea to a new one.
• Sunk-cost fallacy — when we stay committed to an initial idea due to how much effort we have already invested in it.
• Time pressure — rushing for an answer.
• Distraction — which can cause emotional stress that undermines our pattern-spotting ability.

In these situations, we can take deliberate steps to ‘turn the Kalideascope’ and unstick the creative process using the following techniques:

• Reframe the question — change the perspective from which you are approaching the problem to trick your brain into thinking you are solving something new → see Framing the Question.
• Use your professional palette — if we have done the work (described above) to gather the standard patterns that are the basis of our craft, then we can use this technique to systematically cycle through these patterns to make new creative connections.
• Act it out — use your body to prototype the situation, let movement generate new ideas.
• Go to sleep — let your REM cycle remix the inputs overnight → see Multiple Internal Intelligences.
• Plan your creative routine — Create a daily routine that combines time with people, time managing all the many demands on our attention, and distraction-free time that creates space for us to spot new connections between all our creative inputs.

Building these techniques into our creative process can help to ensure we systematically create the conditions for more, and better ideas to emerge.

The Kalideascope builds creative scaffolding

You wouldn’t expect a project manager not to have a plan for managing their project. Nor should we expect an engineer (or other human) not to have a plan for their creative process.

The process of building, filling and turning the Kalideascope establishes the scaffolding for our creative process, ensuring we have space for creativity, a wide enough set of inputs and strategies for creating new connections for more and better ideas.

User guide

This extensive motif provides a framework of creativity that sits alongside other processes in the Pattern Book, forming the foundation for Pattern 04.

Using the Kalideascope in different contexts

• In critical thinking — the Kalideascope provides a framework for gathering and mapping inputs to the critical thinking process. See Pattern 03 the Pattern Book.
• In Continuous Place-Based Design — we use the Kalideascope as the basis for the idea generation stage.

Related motifs

Continuous Place-Based Design, Framing the Question, Juice the System, Multiple Internal Intelligences.

Footnotes

1. Young, J. W. (2003). A Technique for Producing Ideas. McGraw Hill ↩︎
2. Broadbent, O. (2020). How to Have Ideas. In The Conceptual Design of Buildings. Institution of Structural Engineers. https://www.istructe.org/resources/guidance/conceptual-design-of-buildings/. ↩︎
3. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1999). The Implications of a Systems Perspective for the Study of Creativity. In the Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge University Press. ↩︎