How Do We Stay Creative? Exercise, Of Course!

A major ingredient of the secret sauce we make at Clarity Innovations is creativity. In fact, we have a dedicated team called “Creative Services” that specializes in brewing up innovative solutions for our clients. So how does this diverse group of Instructional Designers, Content Developers, Graphic Designers, and Technical Producers stay on top of our creative game? Well... creative games.

As part of regular team meetings, we carve out time for an activity geared toward stretching our thinking. In addition to a little exercise for our brains, it’s usually a lot of fun, as well as a great way to connect with and learn more about each other. In one exercise, teams worked together to use emojis to spell out lyrics to popular songs, which other teams then tried to interpret. Imagine trying to express “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to” in “emoji speak.” In another, we collaborated to build elaborate paper versions of world landmarks, including the Statue of Liberty, the London Bridge, and the Eiffel Tower. 

Our most recent undertaking: Organize a set of 50 assorted album covers. For this project, team members could partner up or work alone, and had 15 minutes to complete the task.

In many ways this activity is similar to challenges we frequently encounter when working on client projects—how to best organize sometimes messy or overwhelming amounts of information and present it to teachers or students in a clear, logical and appealing manner. As coined by Richard Saul Wurman, the LATCH acronym outlines five basic methods of information organization: Location, Alphabet, Time, Category, and Hierarchy. For this project, not all of these approaches were feasible, but it was inspiring and entertaining to see how our team tackled this problem with some unique strategies.

Several teams used visual characteristics as a way to categorize, while one used the tastes of groups found in a typical high school as an organizing principle. One group used an X-Y axis to organize on a scale of “People” to “Other stuff”, and “Simple” to “Complex.” One teammate organized the covers into complementary pairs, and another made an amazingly artistic collage. With a lot of smart people bringing a wide range of backgrounds to a problem, you never know quite what kind of imaginative ideas will break through. 

A little fun in the name of creative thinking—that’s the way we stir things up in the Clarity Creative Services department! Have any creative games that engage your team? Let us know at blog@clarity-innovations.com!