the challenge
Today we are looking for Insights inspired by the Braille Seed. Like always, we can use the title of the Seed literally, or break it down to its traits, or just let our imagination lead the way. I tried to do a little bit of everything with this challenge during the day.
my insight
So, the first thing that came to my mind was inspired by yesterday’s challenge. Yesterday, I played with Lego. I didn’t think of the association then, but I can use the circle connectors on the Lego bricks for Braille writing.
I didn’t settle for just thinking about it, I actually tried it. I found a Braille translator on the Web and wrote my name in Braille using Lego bricks.
Soon after that, I found similar circles creating a texture on the floor, to warn people with impaired vision they are in front of a staircase.
This created a double association for Braille. First, the people this pattern was designed for are the same people the Braille writing was designed for. And the pattern itself — 3D circles creating a texture on an otherwise flat surface — also created a connection in my brain.
The third Insight I captured was this sticker of a butterfly. It was a 3D sticker designed with a little volume. Although this object was not designed for visually impaired, it worked on the same sense Braille was designed for: touching.
And it was also this Insight who made me think about how Braille opened up a new world for blind people, enabled them to read, and in some sense helped them break free from the constraints of their disability.
reflection
Let’s reflect on the chain of associations that led me to the fourth, non-visual, Insight.
It started with the accidental connection between the Seed I played with today and the Prism I played with yesterday. The thought of how Lego bricks and Braille might be connected hadn’t occurred to me until I played with the Braille Seed. If I hadn’t play with the Building with Blocks Prism yesterday, I wouldn’t have came up with this association today either.
That’s a great example for how everything we do and sense can be used as raw material for something new and surprising. It is accidental, random, and beautiful. And that’s how creativity works.
That is why it is so important to explore, observe, and discover all the time.
Next, I saw the texture on the floor, which was not just similar to Braille. It was even more similar the texture of the Lego bricks. So again, I unknowingly used one Insight to come up with the second one.
And finally, the search for things that create texture on an otherwise flat surface led me to the butterfly sticker, which resulted in a different kind of Insight — a thought.
We can try to harness the concept of such creative chain of associations to address also real-world challenges. We need to keep the challenge in mind, in an abstract form, and just let one thing lead to another. Random as this may sound, this might actually lead us to powerful Insights in the context of the challenge we need to address.
More on that idea soon…
mental notes
- Don’t settle for one Insight. Let one Insight lead to another. Let them affect each other.
- Association chains can help us come up with powerful Insights in the context of real-world challenges we need to address.
now it is your turn… be creative!