“All children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up.”

— Pablo Picasso

I decided to try the paperclip test that educationalist and creativity expert, Sir Ken Robinson, recounted in his Ted Talk, Changing Education Paradigms. The test was part of a longitudinal study of 1500 school age kids who were periodically tested on ‘divergent thinking’ from six until fifteen years of age.

Similar to Edward De Bono’s concept of lateral thinking, Robinson defines divergent thinking as “an ability to interpret a question in many different ways and the ability to see many different answers to a question” - it's “an essential capacity for creativity”.

The question posed was “How many uses can you think of for a paper clip?”

According to the talk, most people can think of ten to fifteen answers with good ‘divergent thinkers’ coming up with around two hundred solutions. Although I had a target to aim for, I had no time limit.

To meet the challenge I gave myself thirty minutes to answer the question and managed to hit a little over 100 ideas within the timeframe. I consoled myself that given more time I could have doubled that figure. However, I had to admit that I struggled towards the end to come up with distinctly different ideas. I considered some of these as variations or extensions of the same theme. If this was allowed I could have joined the ranks of divergent thinking ‘geniuses’. If not, then sadly I had to accept that I wasn't as creative as the six-year-olds in the test!

According to the study, a whopping 98% of the kindergarten children tested scored at genius level, which indicates we born with this creative capability. Unfortunately, the study also found these same students’ scores declined markedly over time. When they were retested five years later aged 8 to 10 years, those at genius level had dropped to 50%. After another five years, the number of divergent thinking geniuses had fallen further still.

Based on this study Robinson argued that education was the primary intervention for these children, which he proposed is ill-equipped, in its current guise, to meet the needs of our children in the face of burgeoning technology and globalisation. He posited the view that our antiquated education system was developed during the Industrial Revolution, where children were batched by “date of manufacture” (age), configured and tested like products on an assembly line.

In his talk he proposed a radical reevaluation of our whole notion of education and encouraged redesigning our schools to cultivate more creativity which acknowledges the presence of multiple types of intelligence. These themes are further explored in his most famous Ted Talk, Do Schools Kill Creativity? which has garnered over 38 million views.

Creativity in the Workplace

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average worker currently holds ten different jobs before the age of forty. McCrindle Research’s ‘Australia in 2020: A Snapshot of the Future’ forecasts that Generation Z will have an average of six careers in their lifetime, with other studies predicting that our youngest workers will hold between twelve to fifteen jobs throughout their lives. These statistics highlight the relentless change that is the hallmark of modern life, and suggests the growing importance of developing a creative mind set, not only for job prospects for our young, but more importantly, maintaining their mental health.

Google and Apple are at the top of ‘the most valuable companies in the world’. Their business models are purposefully design focused, and their corporate cultures nurture and value innovation in the pursuit of profits. Consequently, terms like ‘design thinking’ have entered the mainstream lexicon and more businesses are employing people with creative skill sets to grow their own businesses. In education, new courses are being developed and offered in universities that bridge the business and technological gaps in anticipation of newly created roles within the corporations of the future.

Creative employees bring resilience and an ability to think outside the box by connecting ideas from different disciplines to create things of value and innovation. Designers bring a robust process, which involves analytical and creative skills to develop new concepts for testing and evaluation prior to production. Whilst cutting edge businesses have recognised the value of these skills to grow their market share, how is creativity and divergent thinking good for mental health?

Creativity as a Panacea for Mental Health

Our society is rapidly changing with technology replacing more of our analytical or repetitive job functions and causing the constant restructure of existing industries. For example, what will happen to the majority of our transport workers when artificial intelligence, drones and driverless technology impacts their livelihood? Those that are unable to adapt may be trapped in a continual spiral of unemployment stress and depression. Even now our simplest jobs and daily activities require a rudimentary knowledge of computer interfaces from using the cash register in MacDonald's to ATMs and online banking.

No one likes change, especially when it's forced upon them. An effective antidote to stress is developing the creative ability to adapt to change, to let go of past, learn from our mistakes and explore positive solutions to create something new and meaningful. If we are trained in school to embrace change - which is the essence of the Buddhist concept of impermanence, we are relieved of our false notions of 'success' and ‘security’ and begin embracing each moment in our lives with unwavering positive acceptance.

Design Thinking & The Double Diamond

Design Thinking is a term popularised by David Kelley, one of America's leading design innovators and founder of IDEO. Harvard's Teaching & Learning Lab defines Design Thinking as "a mindset and approach to learning, collaboration, and problem solving. In practice, the design process is a structured framework for identifying challenges, gathering information, generating potential solutions, refining ideas, and testing solutions. Design Thinking can be flexibly implemented; serving equally well as a framework for a course design or a roadmap for an activity or group project".

Design Thinking is the heart of 'the design process’, which can be can be taught to non-designers and applied in their everyday lives. It involves an organic process of divergent and convergent thinking to arrive at a final solution, which is why 'design' is sometimes called “applied creativity” since designers utilise both creativity and logic to solve problems and create things of value, whether it’s a website, an interior space or revolutionary product.

'The Design Process' is more difficult to define. A quick Google search is all it takes to realise that the different design disciplines, the multitude of design schools teaching these disciplines, and the plethora of design businesses all appear to use diverse terminology to describe the same design process stages. This jargon can be confusing for not only design students to discern but is almost impossible for the layperson to disentangle.

When I taught at university, the best and clearest example of the design process I found was the UK Design Council’s Double Diamond model, which can be reduced to the Four D’s: Discover, Define, Develop & Deliver.

If the paperclip question were approached as an actual design brief, it may look something like this:

Discover

The purpose at this stage is to gain insight into the problem at hand through divergent thinking - by interpreting the question in many different ways. Some questions a designer might ask themselves to generate new ideas for further research or development might be:

What exactly do you mean by paperclip? Most people would have a mental picture of the Gem paperclip, but there were many types invented since the first paperclip was invented in 1867.
What were they and how many still exist today?
Why did these paperclips fail or succeed?
Can I make the flaws of less successful paperclips better?
Are there other types of clips or fastening systems I can use instead of the Gem paperclip, like a money clip, clothes peg or hair clip? How many different clips can I use to also secure paper?
Why does the paperclip have to be made from wire? Can it be made from new or alternative materials?
How about designing a paperclip from an environmentally friendly material or process?
Does it have to be in one piece or can it be modular and assembled to create a larger clip like Lego?
You didn't specify the size. If the paperclip were large enough it could be used as a bike rack or boat docking cleat if it were embedded in concrete.
Would there be any benefit in constructing a building structure or spaceship in the shape of a paperclip?

The above may look like a form of convergent or analytical thinking, but as you can see rephrasing these questions can dramatically increase the number of ideas.

The approach of the Discover stage is to see the ‘problem’ through fresh eyes with no judgements, which a six-year-old undoubtedly possesses. The methods designers apply to gain insight are varied and numerous, and usually are a combination of sketching, discussion and researching. Some may immediately begin sketching solutions which direct further research. Others may talk to their client in depth about their vision, objectives, needs and wants. Others may conduct surveys, run tests or interview people from their client's target market to gain deeper insights, or perform a cursory internet search to research how others have tackled the problem in the past. It all depends on the complexity of the project and the client's budget.

The essential ingredient when it comes to creativity or divergent thinking is a sense of openness and playfulness, suspending judgement and analysis until later. The advice I've given students in the divergent stages of the design process is to go for quantity rather than quality.

The Discover stage is really about getting an overall feel before committing to where you want to go next, remaining open and questioning everything. The analogy I like to use is when you visit a new country you begin by researching a little about the country and culture, but once you arrive you begin exploring your immediate environment, identifying where your hotel is located within the city, identifying surrounding landmarks and noting places of interest you may want to dine at or visit.

Define

The objective of the Define stage is developing a strategy based on actionable criteria that can be evaluated and assessed. This is where convergent thinking takes over to provide a necessary focus for your efforts and limited resources. What you are determining is the feasibility of your plan based on sound analysis of the problem.

This could be deciding which tour you want to book based on your travel requirements in order of importance - your primary consideration being the needs of your young family, your secondary being the total cost of the tour, and your tertiary criteria being the bus must be air-conditioned.

With regards to designing a paperclip, a designer considers the functional and commercial aspects of the design, its fundamental purpose for existence and all requirements to objectively test the final solution. Following are some of the criteria that may be discussed with a client for further input.

A good clip should:

hold paper together, but not catch or mutilate papers when used
hold a minimum of “x” papers securely (how many?)
be thin (so it won’t add unnecessary bulk to combined files)
be easily used (inserted with minimal effort)
be safe (no sharp edges)
be lightweight (requiring little extra postage)
be cheap (using as little wire as possible), and
be durable enough for reuse.

The Define stage usually results in formal design brief so both you and your client is on the same page.

Develop

This is the fun part of the design process where you allow all your research and the fundamental requirements of the design to percolate in the back of your mind and you begin to shift into divergent thinking mode again by exploring form and function through ideation, sketching, model-making, iteration and testing. This process of trial and error helps designers improve and refine their ideas ready for production or completion.

There are many concept generation techniques in a designer's arsenal. In coming up with uses for the paperclip, I mainly used mind mapping and brainstorming to jot down my ideas quickly. Sketches may have looked prettier, but to generate 200 ideas would have taken considerably longer. There is no way I would have been able to sketch even 100 ideas to any degree of legibility in the timeframe I set myself.

If this were a real design job, the next stage would have definitely been to sketch thumbnails or play around with actual paperclips by folding and twisting them into new shapes to explore form and generate further ideas.

The best advice I can give students in the Develop stage is use the ideation tools that are the most effective in the time given. No one can play, let alone think of interesting ideas if they are stressed and running out of time.

The second suggestion I would give is to sketch or model your ideas first - it's an efficient and important step in concept generation. Don't use the computer until you have a clear idea of what you want to do. Some of my students failed from stubbornly continuing to develop a bad concept simply because they had already invested so much computer time tweaking their designs trying to get them to work, when the smart thing would have been to abandon the idea and move on.

Sketching is always going to be faster in uncovering potential problems in a design. Even when you make a mistake in your first sketch, your brain will adjust to compensate for poor perspective for example, and your next drawing will be much better.

Deliver

This is the final stage of the double diamond design process where the resulting project is finalised, produced and launched. This is the culmination of all the time and effort you've invested in the project.

Final Thoughts

Design Thinking is about working smart, not hard. Its about using both sides of your brain to arrive at a positive solution. If you're able to develop a creative mind set, daily life is no different than an ongoing series of projects each with their own set of challenges and problems. All problems have solutions. Some may not be ideal but with choice there is freedom. Even if a situation is unpleasant, like a rocky relationship or changing vocations, I would rather decide to make the change rather than have the outcome foisted upon me. The freedom to have options is a source of happiness.

Now it's your turn. Are you smarter than a six-year-old? Try the test and find out.

Essays

Divergent Thinking - Are You Smarter Than a Six Year Old?