child's play

I often find myself afraid of the judgment of my peers when it comes to my design work, my views and

opinions and even my comments on other peoples work. I don't know why, but as an adult, I allow peer pressure and expectation to negatively effect my innate need of expression.

Innovation and creativity are very important in my field of work as a designer, but are also especially vital in education. Teachers prepare their students for a world that is not yet created, a world that changes. And yet, so many education systems focus almost exclusively on memorization and conformity as a learning method. 

But what about the paradigm of play?

Tim Brown from IDEO, in the following video from ted.com, talks about the connection between creativity and playfulness. 

In my opinion, the 3 types of "play" (exploration, building and role play) are vital to the materialization of innovative product and service design solutions.

But don't you agree that there already exists a phenomena that enables us to be childlike in our creativity?

Mind Mapping!

A mind map is a useful method in recording a high volume of information in a way that filters the complexity and amount of information given to us, whether it be from a book or an oral presentation. It is childlike in a sense that we draw and add bright colours to mind maps to remember key points, so the idea of playfulness is evident in this method.

Childlike maturity. How about that for an oxymoron?