De Bono's Thinking Hats

The thinking hats I feel aren't the most useful way of progressing, as I feel as designers we already ask a lot of these questions and think in many different ways when we are designing, but I do feel it's useful maybe to force yourself into thinking in a way you may have ignored or forgotten and make sure you have covered all aspects of the post. i.e. I am not very black hat so it might be useful for me to make sure I have looked at it from a negative perspective.

Text Focus

Focusing on saying your message in different ways, especially to different audiences or in different lengths is yet another way of shaking up what we already have in order come out with the most effective way of communicating to your audience. I found it helpful even though I don't particularly struggle with words but simply trying different solution showed that even though the initial statement I had may have been perfectly fine, there are sometimes better ways of saying it if you try push yourself.

Random Input

I found random input very helpful in terms of showing how making random connections can help shake up ideas when we are stuck. There are some very fruitful ideas that we can use when we are stuck, such as relating politicians to fat cats.

Visual Library/Precidents

Creating a visual library is a useful tool for translating the ideas that we have in our mind maps into visual language to put on our poster. There are some connection to be made ie. politicians to aliens or voters to chains. This is helpful especially for initial ideation or if I get stuck to try different connections.

Observing Ihi and Wehi

Going out and trying to find examples of images, billboards or poster that try to convince you of an opinion was harder than I expected – most images nowadays are trying to sell you something not really an opinion.

It's very interesting paying attention to the reactions and thoughts that our minds have when seeing these image trying to convince us of ideas, something we usually do subconsciously. It highlights the point that not everything happens is obvious and observable.

I also found that although something is trying to convince me of one view, it can also not have the desired effect so it is important to try and understand all the effects your image can have and try to control that.

Mind Mapping

Mind mapping was a useful tool for exploring both sides of the argument and different groupings of ideas, which helps me see different ways of expressing or arguing for different ideas. I was able to use many of the arguments from the debate as ideas in my mind map. Some of the research I did was able to help with these ideas and check their validity.

Voting Research

It's interesting doing this research as a first time voter, seeing that there is a very low turn out of 18-25y/o voters (less than half) and that there were about 5% less voters that voted in the last election than the one before.

Reading some other articles it seems that making voting more accessible is a big need, either through education or simply making it easier to vote through online voting. But there is also discontent in either just not being interested or feeling like your vote is not making a difference.

Verbal Debate

I found the debate a very engaging way of discussing and thinking about the topic, especially because I did debating throughout college. It is interesting to synthesise ideas into cohesive arguments and also highlights the idea of the need to synthesise your poster into a clear, concise and persuasive poster.

By presenting our debate we also identify flaws in our arguments by hearing the opposing side of the argument and this highlights the importance of understanding the ideas that we are presenting and the ways in which Ihi and Wehi can differ, that although we have one idea in our head, that idea can be very different or fall down when presented to someone else.