creativity Archives | Digital Cortex

13 Tools to Promote Divergent Thinking

New ideas can come from anywhere, but are often hardest to find when you’re actually looking for them. However, I believe it’s possible to jumpstart your brain, even under pressure, by applying yourself to a bit of divergent thinking:

Divergent thinking typically occurs in a spontaneous, free-flowing manner, such that many ideas are generated in an emergent cognitive fashion. Many possible solutions are explored in a short amount of time, and unexpected connections are drawn. After the process of divergent thinking has been completed, ideas and information are organized and structured using convergent thinking.

Wikipedia

So to help anyone out there who may be stuck for ideas, here’s my list of divergent thought helpers:

Stumbleupon – highly recommended: tell it your interests and hit ‘stumble’ to be sent to a random site
Buzzfeed – hit the randomize button in the top right corner (occasionally NSFW) to see something usually quite cool
Mystery Seeker – type something in the search box and receive a set of google results for a totally different subject
The Wiki Game – start in one place on wikipedia, and try to end up in another, while seeing loads of content on the way
We Heart It – inspiring and high-quality imagery, often captioned, and with decent search functionality
We Feel Fine – an emotional search tool, potentially good for scanning & visualising need states
Popurls – see the freshest stories from a range of great online sources, with customisation options
Newsmap – a visualisation of the latest news, powered by google (quite old but potentially interesting)
Thesaurus.net – high quality thesaurus dictionary: search synonyms, antonyms, rhymes, quotes and idioms
Visual Thesaurus – see the associated meanings between concepts – worth paying for
Bing Visual Search – search the web visually in an intuitive, exploratory way
oSkope – discover images, videos and products related to a search query
TouchGraph SEO – see the links between topics and websites

Finally, and it may take more time for ideas to emerge this way, but TED really is an amazing resource for this kind of thing. I recently attended TEDxObserver, after which my head was swimming with ideas.

Can you suggest any of your own?

10 More Tips on Creativity

Web Discoveries for May 27th

These are my del.icio.us links for May 27th

PHP Tutorial – Echo –
I am learning PHP to create my first WordPress plugin. Sometimes my geekiness knows no bounds.
Windows Alt Key Codes –
Because you know it makes sense to bookmark pages like this.
How to Build Your Own WordPress Widget | Johnathan Andersen Design | WordPress Designer and Developer –
Very useful for a little side project I’m working on. For a sneak peek see http://digitalcortex.net/plugins
CRINID | 12 icebreakers to kick-start your Brainstorm –
Some interesting ideas about how to ‘dis-incorporate’ brainstorm meetings, and get attendees warmed up quickly.
Creative Digital Technology and Web Design –
Web to Mobile / Mobile to Web agency who have built some of the best integrated creatives.

Phorm – For or Against

Posted by mobile phone:
Today I was selected to join a debating team for a company debate into the merits and threats of Phorm, the controversial ISP-level ad network.I’m on the team arguing that Phorm is the future of Internet advertising. Bloody hell.

Will write up my findings in a future post, but here’s hoping our audience sees past my contempt for the technology. I really think that Phorm and technologies like it are a risk to the creativity and dynamism of Digital Media advertising, which needn’t ever be scary, controversial, or written about in the Daily Mail.