Humor and creativity both involve making non-obvious connections between seemingly unrelated things. Innovation, or creativity, is at the heart of product design.
This talk will describe research on links between creativity, prolific idea generation, humor, and play. In a study comparing "new product" idea generation capabilities of professional product designers to improvisational comedians, we found that comedians were more prolific idea generators. Furthermore, our studies have shown that the ability to generate many ideas is strongly correlated with having creative ideas. Consequently, and perhaps surprisingly, improvisational comedians were found to be more successful in proposing creative product ideas than professional product designers.
These findings suggest the importance of developing improved idea-generation techniques, and that we can learn from methods used in humor and play. When we play we tend to be more creative: both play and innovation involve manipulating ideas and imagining "what if." So what if we promoted play in the design process and taught design through play? This approach has led to the development of playful ideation tools that are based on humor theory. Kudrowitz will describe some of these ideation tools, show product concepts that have resulted from the application of these tools, and illustrate how they are incorporated into the course 2.00b, Toy Product Design.
Barry Kudrowitz is a PhD candidate in the Mechanical Engineering department studying the relationships between humor and creativity in hopes of developing better idea generation tools for designers. He co-designed the Nerf Atom Blaster, a toy currently on the market; an elevator simulator that is in operation at the International Spy Museum in Washington DC; and a ketchup dispensing robot that was featured on the Martha Stewart Show. Kudrowitz is the co-creator and course instructor of 2.00b Toy Product Design, in which he uses play as a means of getting students excited about engineering and product design.
