Sometimes our most obvious and daily “tool” can be the source of creative ideas.

I am talking about our Five Senses.

This tool can be used to produce ideas for designing products, spaces or rooms, ideas for parties or special events, and much more.

Here is how you can use our natural gifts for coming up with creative ideas.

First – think of the product, the place or the event.

List the senses that are activated by it and involved in it.

Then do one of the following:

1. Intensify a sense:

   Choose one of the senses that is involved and make the experience stronger – intensify the visual effects, make the sound more dominant, the touch more memorable, the taste stronger or the smell more noted.

   Example:

   In food products – make the taste and smell intense, and call the products in names that stress the extreme experience of eating it and enjoying it.

2. Switch senses:

   Replace on of the senses with an alternative sense.
   Instead of sound – use written words, instead of vision – let people feel it through touch, and so forth.

   Example:

   Lots of fun classroom or party games may be easily invented in which participants need to use one sense instead of the other.

3. Combine several senses:

   This is used to make the experience more holistic and powerful.
   Make the product or place so that when you use it – several senses are activated together – taste, smell, sound, touch or vision.

   Example:

   A playroom in which when you touch the surface of the walls you hear a sound, and a combination of lights (e.g. vision) is switched on.

4. Neutralize a sense:

   Take one of the existing senses out of the experience.
   Remove or minimize its use as much as possible.

   Example:

   A children’s museum wished to convey to kids the meaning of being blind.
   It came up with an exhibition in which there was total darkness in the room and visitors where guided by blind guides, who helped them feel their way around – without the help of normal sight.

Source by Amir Elion