The first step in the creative problem solving process is clarifying the problem. It is about defining the exact problem to solve. To begin, I have identified a general area for the first creative product, which is helping people to improve creative person attributes. I am just finishing up a semester of teaching Creative Problem Solving to high school seniors through a program offered by Genesee Community College. As I was reflecting on my teaching practice, I decided that I want to get students practicing creative attributes before even stepping into a collaborative CPS classroom.
I wish students had a background and practice in what makes a creative person “creative” before having to learn about the creative problem solving process.
visioning a future state
Schools today do not do a good job with the top tiers of bloom’s taxonomy. A lot of students want the “right” answer. They don’t want to be wrong or look silly. I knew I had a lot of damage to undo. Creativity and creative problem solving requires a person to stretch beyond what they are normally asked to do. I realized that if I could have students learn about creative attributes before stepping into my classroom, they will be better prepared to dive in to and get the most out of the creative process.
It’s important to not self-edit and to embrace wild and unusual combinations when working on improving divergent thinking skills. Some activities might seem outlandish to someone who isn’t used to thinking outside the box.
To help my students be more open to the creative process and problem solving, which involves acceptance, openness, and playfulness, I want to help them to first adopt the attributes of creative individuals. This helps people become more comfortable with the divergent phases of these activities and be more receptive to trying new things.
The thing is, working on becoming a more creative person requires practicing it all the time, not just while in class. That is why for the first challenge, I want to work on something that I can send to students to do before stepping into class. A self-directed challenge that helps them to be more open.
Therefore the first challenge I want to tackle is to create “something” that will help people to be more open to experience and novelty which is one of the ultimate predictors of creative achievement (S. B. Kaufman & Gregoire, 2016).
So my first order of business is making sure I am solving the correct problem. I will use ChatGP3 to help me clarify my thinking and explore the vision. Let’s see what I came up with:
Results / Created Products
The results to my chat with CHATGP3 along with my insights and data can be found at this link.
First, I spent time crafting a prompt that had as much information that was clear to me in the direction that I wanted to go. Then I would use the outputs to craft more prompts, digging deeper with each step. I was given many ways to test if my idea was a viable idea as well as questions for me to ask myself to see if it was feasible. One such idea that AI could have helped me implement quickly was using the design thinking tool, empathy, to survey and interview my potential market.
I thought it was incredible how I was given such great advice on how to create a survey and interview to test out my idea. The best part it created the survey. It created the interview questions. It created the blog posts and social media! It even created the video script to introduce the survey.
Although, I will not be using the survey, ChatGP3 did a wonderful job and I think it would have been a great way to test product idea viability if needed.
Another way that AI could have helped with implementing the empathy portion of the project is by creating a CHATBOT that could potentially interview the target audience. The chatbot could be deployed on devices like ALEXA or just a text chat box. There is a lot of potential on how AI can assist a person in the clarifying stage of the creative problem solving process.
Best Practice Tip
The most useful part of my conversation with ChatGPT3 was getting it to understand what I was doing by first explaining what my project was about. Then through many interactions, usually using the output of the AI prompts to dig deeper, the quality of the output gets better. So best practice tip is actually to have a conversation with it for a few lines for the AI to learn more about your project. Then start prompting it with specifics to get quality answers.
REFERNCES
Kaufman, S. B., & Gregoire, C. (2016). Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind (Reprint). TarcherPerigee.