Developing creative thinking with the Intuiti method
A few months ago, Facebook advertised me about a deck of “creative” cards. I was a little skeptical, I was afraid of ending up with another product ordered online on the other side of the world and never arrived at my destination.
At the same time, the cards were beautiful in the photos, it looked like something amazing and considering the price, I gave the shady ad a chance.
This is how I discovered, by chance, a real gem: Intuiti.
How does Intuiti work?
Intuiti is a method based on a set of cards designed by the Italian designer Matteo Di Pascale.
This method can be used in groups or individually, in order to stimulate creative thinking around a given subject: it could be a product or service, the organization of a team or a company, etc.
The set includes 78 cards which represent images, linked to “evocative stories” collected in a small guide.
The design of the cards is inspired by Terrell’s archetypes, tarot cards and Gestalt principles of psychology.
“Intuiti” is an Italian word which means “intuitions”: the set can be used randomly (draw cards and “let them speak” like tarots, by reading the stories out loud) or guided (during a workshop for example).
The purpose of this method is to stimulate creativity …
But what is creativity?
What is creativity?
In the Cambridge Dictionary, it says that creativity is
“the ability to produce or use original and unusual ideas”.
A study by Adobe shows that 8 in 10 people believe that unlocking creativity is essential for economic growth and almost two thirds of those surveyed believe that creativity is precious for society.
However, only 1 in 4 people think of fully expressing their own creative potential.
Another study by George Land reveals that we are naturally creative and that as we grow up we learn to be non-creative.
Creativity is therefore a skill that can be studied and developed.
This is where methods like Intuiti come in.
Cathartic creativity
Matteo Di Pascale says that in the beginning he designed Intuiti with an idea of creativity very close to the definition of the Cambridge Dictionary, ie as the ability to generate ideas.
At first, he tested his method in many workshop groups, but no great idea came out during the sessions.
On the other hand, by working with the cards, the participants seemed rather to interiorize archetypes and relate them to their personal or professional daily life.
The cards, ultimately, did not generate solutions, but they did allow problems to emerge.
They therefore have, I’d say, a “cathartic” utility, because they allow us to discover our lies and dissatisfactions, so that we can resolve them and become happier — and therefore, more creative.
More specifically, Matteo Di Pascale tells us that:
“Creativity is not the ability to come up with great ideas, but the consequence of doing what you like.”
The concept is that a working group is more creative if the people who compose it are themselves more satisfied and happy, more comfortable with their jobs and with their lives.
We join George Land’s theory of creativity like something that is innate but needs to be developed, and we integrate it with the new joy-creativity combination.
How do you know what you like?
But how do you identify what you like to become more creative?
Matteo makes us think about the fact that a child never has a “creative block” in front of a white paper: he will always be able to go from his point A to his point B, he knows what he wants and getting there for him it’s just a straight line. Easy-peasy.
Then we grow up, society imposes on us models of happiness that do not necessarily correspond to our internal standards (Marx would call them “superstructures”): you have to be successful, you have to be compliant, you have to preserve your reputation, you have to be respectable…
This is how we forget our point B and we find ourselves locked in a circle where we bounce endlessly without knowing what we are doing.
The solution that Matteo offers to get out of the circle is very simple: tell the truth, veritas vos liberat.
Tell the truth and leave the job that does not satisfy us, radically change the direction of a project or a company if we are not so sure about it, make more authentic our relationships with others by being honest with them.
Only then can we break our circles and become creative again like children.
To know more about Intuiti: https://intuiti.it
Originally published at http://www.ethic-design.com.
