Mycoted

When I was a freshmen I took ED&G 100, now they call it EDSGN or something like that. I got along really well with my professor especially when he asked us open ended questions like, "design a new road." And we were given five or ten minutes to come up with as many ideas as possible. I love brainstorming and trying to come up with creative solutions and wacky ideas to try to solve a problem. That same professor gave us a resource to help us in situations where creativity is required but a group is struggling to generate ideas or the concept generation process has become stagnant. This resources was mycoted, which is luckily still around, and can be found here.

Mycoted is a site that lists, among other things, ways to brainstorm or help a group get started with idea generation. The ideas range from simple things like using a flow chart to map potential processes to using SCAMMPERR which stands for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Magnify, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, Rearrange, and Reverse.

These techinques are very helpful in a class like ours and might also help break the ice during initial group meetings where people tend to feel awkward at the thought of talking about an off the wall idea.

Check out the website!