INSPIRATIONAL PICKING

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INSPIRATIONAL PICKING

Recommended age: 5-18 years
Location: Indoors
Time needed: 1-2 hours in one session
Where in the process: Pre-study

Materials/Tools: Printed inspirational images and colour-coded stickers.
Purpose: To kick-start the imagination and ideas of what is possible, and to get references

ABOUT THE METHOD

To get the creativity going, we sometimes kick things off by showing inspiration in the photos with examples of street designs from around the world as an inspiration.

Each child then gets to vote on which ideas (photos) they liked the most and which one they liked the least, using colour- coded stickers that they put on each photo.

All these photos are a great way for children to realise how much is possible – and also, we get a better understanding of what they like. Choose images based on the project: for example, if you are working on a street, choose images that show inspiration in street environments.

PREPARATIONS

Print out images, for example from Pinterest. Are you going to use the photos more than once? We recommend that you laminate them. You are going to need colour-coded stickers, two to three different colours. We use red, green and sometimes also yellow. Each colour tells you if they like it, hate it or well, it is ok (yellow).

For further preparations, see under each age category under: “How to do it”.

Some sticky-tack is good if you want to put all the photos up on a wall.

HOW TO DO IT

5-7 years

For this age group it works well if you define the meaning of the colours by thumbs up/thumbs down. This is also helpful if there are any language barriers in the group. Green sticker means good/nice/funny/thumbs up, red sticker means bad/ugly/boring/thumbs down. Make sure everyone is onboard!
Put all the pictures on the wall at eye level for the children.
Have the children each look at the pictures and then mark the pictures with green and red dots on the back of the pictures. This will reduce them being influenced by each other’s thoughts.
When all the children have finished putting their stickers on the photos , you take them down, gather the group and reveal the backside of the photos. Have a conversation with the group about how they have chosen, let them tell you why they have voted as they did. Remember to take notes of what they say.

8-12 years

Let the inspirational pictures compete against each other!

Lay out all the inspirational pictures on a table.
Ask the children to choose two pictures each that inspire them
When they have decided, ask them one by one to show everyone their pictures and tell why they find them inspiring. After each presentation, ask the remaining group to vote on which of the two inspirational images they like the most.
Semi-final: After the first round, collect all the ‘winning’ pictures and put them on the table. Now you ask the group which of these images they think should serve as inspiration for their own design process.They can vote for one picture each. Pictures that do not receive any votes are now eliminated from the competition.
Final: If you think you still have too many pictures on the table, you have a final round. You state how many pictures can win the final and then let the children vote again on the remaining pictures. Children who voted for pictures that only had a few votes will now abandon their own picture to vote for a picture they think they have a chance of winning – and this is how the right number of winners is finally selected! These images will be saved and used as inspirational images for the rest of the design process.

13-18 years old

When we work with young people, we usually use three different colours for the pictures: green-good/great/cool, red-boring/unstimulating/poor and yellow-good but has potential if…

How to:

Put all the pictures on a wall.
Each participant gets two stickers of each colour to use to mark the inspirational pictures.
When everyone has marked their photos of choice talk their choices through with them, asking:

What makes something good/great/cool: is it the colour, shape, content, activity?
The pictures that have yellow spots: what is good about them? What could be improved? How would you do it?
What makes something boring/unstimulating/poor? What things/factors make the activity or thing boring/unstimulating/poor?
What happens to a place if you take a green coloured inspirational image and put it on the place. What happens to the place then?

Remember to take notes of what young people talk about. It can also be helpful to take the pictures with dots so that you can easily go back and be reminded.

THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

If there is widespread competitive thinking in the group and the group really needs more collaborative exercises, then this method risks going the wrong way. In this case, you can choose to let the children put colour-coded stickers on the pictures instead (See how to age 5-7) . You can still let the children talk about why they chose their pictures and how they think they could be inspired by them, but you can remove the actual voting element.

In order to explain why they like a picture or not they have to think about the picture and verbalise their thoughts regarding it to the rest of the group. This will reveal to us listening whether or not there is a thought behind their election and what that thought is.

Pictures that have been thoroughly reflected upon are usually the ones that win.

THE METHOD AS PART OF THE DESIGN PROCESS

The method can be used separately in order to find out about children’s design preferences. However, we recommend using it in combination with other methods such as mental maps, physical maps, modelling or iterative sketching process to gain a deeper understanding of children’s preferences.

Tip box

Look for images on Pinterest!