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Creative Post-it® Notes
by Brian Clegg
The humble Post-it Note
provides one of the most simple but flexible tools for creativity. They are
particularly valuable at three stages in the creativity process.
Understanding the problem
The first step when attempting to a solve a problem or generate new ideas is
to be clear just what it is that you are dealing with. It is very easy
otherwise to end up solving the wrong problem. By assembling facts about the
problem, each on a separate note and then assembling them on a wall it is
easy to gather together and structure your thoughts about the problem.
Idea generation and
structuring
Even more effective is to use Post-its at the idea generation stage. One of
the hardest things in a group creativity session is keeping track of ideas
and collecting similar ideas together. Write each idea as it comes up on a
Post-it note (you can give everyone in a group their own pad) and stick on a
wall. Then group ideas to merge them together before they are evaluated.
Idea selection
During idea evaluation an effective technique to help a group to come to a
consensus on selecting ideas to implement is to give each member of the
group a number of small Post-its (say five or ten each). Each of these acts
as a vote - all a person's votes can go on a single idea, or they can be
spread according to their opinion of the ideas. Make sure that the voters
are aware of the criteria being used. Always use 'appeal' as one - but you
may have to bring others like risk, cost, benefit etc. into the equation.
Special notes
If you feel
that the rectangular shape of conventional postits leave you thinking within
the box, Banxia Software has developed oval shaped postits. We are frankly
rather doubtful that the benefits are anything more than cosmetic, but if
you want to make a point and break out of that rectangular thinking,
check Banxia's
products.
A whole
book
If you are interested
in learning more about using Post-it's in creativity there's a whole book on
the subject: see below for more information.
Post-it® is a trademark of
3M.
Copyright © Creativity
Unleashed Limited 2006
Last update 11 January 2007
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