How do you go about ispiration/having ideas?
Stefan: The process I've been using most often has been described by Maltese philosopher Edward DeBono, who suggests starting to think about an idea for a particular project by taking a random object as point of departure. Say, I have to design a pen, and instead of looking at all other pens and thinking about how pens are used and who my target audience is etc., I start thinking about pens using.....(this is me now looking around the hotel room for a random object)....bed spreads. Ok, hotel bedspreads are...sticky....contain many bacteria...., ahh, would be possible to design a pen that is thermo sensitive, so it changes colors where I touch it, yes, that could actually be nice: An all black pen, that becomes yellow on the touching points of fingers/hands...., not so bad, considering it took me all of 30 seconds. Of course, the reason this works is because DeBono's method forces the brain to start out at new and different point, preventing it from falling into a familiar grove it has formed before.
