If you've ever had to cut a melon, you will know it is not the easiest food to slice up for a snack.
Innovators have come up with a simple solution. They found a way to grow a square melon.
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| Design thinking - creative strategies designers use to consider issues and solve problems while creating new ideas |
Solutions to problems like these seem so simple, yet are so effective. Getting into the mind of people who design new things could be useful to us as students learning about science and engineering.
Professors at Yale University Barry Nalebuff and Ian Ayres believe that taking problems and flipping them 180 degrees to the opposite of reality is one way to come up with radical new ideas that lead to innovation today's world.
Over half of the process of making new things is in the coming-up-with-ideas phase. If we aren't feeling out the needs of the people who will use a product and don't understand the problem we can't think of useful and innovative solutions.
In class we will begin our unit on design by discussing how teams of people work together to come up with new ideas that people want and need. Students will be involved in an activity called the "Bad Idea Factory." In this activity they will be asked to come up with as many bad ideas as they can in a set amount of time. Through this activity we discuss what it means to come up with new ideas and how we can "ideate" more effectively in groups.
Thanks to Mr. Farren for sharing the Nalebuff, Ayers article
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