For the first BCT studio project, I joined a group that created the Card Ass project. Card Ass is the name we gave to our product because it is silly and wacky, and it is a shortened version of “Card Assistant”. Card Ass was a product aimed at, but not limited to, young creatives. The aim of the experience is to assist and inspire creativity amongst artists especially when they are stuck at creative blocks. To take part in the experience the user draws three cards, a character card, a setting card, and a wild card. The character card gives the user a character they must interpret and draw, Setting Card provides the situation or place the character must be drawn in, and finally the wild card gives the overall drawing/artwork a bit of a twist, an example is that you must draw a girlfriend for your character or your character will die in this drawing.
At the beginning of the project, I was initially in a group of 3. We decided to merge with another group of 4 to create a larger group of 7. This group of 7 then became Card Ass. We wanted to join groups because we felt that there weren’t enough ideas just amongst us 3 and thought creating a larger group could provoke more ideas and concepts. Initially, the group was looking at basing our product on creative writers and authors. We wanted to encourage more people to begin writing and we were trying to create a very enjoyable way for people to get interested in writing. However, as a group we realized that none of us were very interested in writing, so we didn’t have a lot of interest in the topic and thought it would be a better idea to look at a different topic. As a group, we were stuck and couldn’t think of any new ideas. The final week before the submission date arrived and everyone started to panic. We did an activity to brainstorm ideas and one of our members, Ella, thought it would be a good idea to keep the same idea we had for the creative writing but, aim it at artists and young creatives. The group really liked this idea and we concepted, tested, and designed our final product all in the final week.
Looking back at the process we went through, the group seemed to be doing a lot of work but the topics we were researching and looking at basing our product experience on just was interesting to us. We mistakenly spent a lot of time on something we didn’t like, instead, we should’ve come together as a group sooner and discussed what we are interested in and find if there were any mutual interests earlier on so we could spend more time on that, so we potentially could have made a better product and experience in the end. I noticed that at the beginning of the process there were a lot of ideas by members that were just shut down too quickly or weren’t considered very much at all. This is sort of disappointing to look back at as I realize the creative drawing and young creatives topic was originally brought up right at the beginning of the process and as a group, we should’ve researched it more and realized that it was a really good idea. If we did that it would’ve saved so much time and would have improved our product because we would’ve had more time to work on it. From this, personally, I learned that instead of coming up with one good idea right at the beginning and only focusing on that, we should put it to the side, research other ideas and topics to see if there is anything better or more interesting and if nothing can be found then we can come back to the original idea and focus on it from there, but since we only focused on the one idea for most of the process, we missed out on many opportunities that would’ve benefited us. As a group, we learned that we should be more open to different ideas and that we should brainstorm our ideas and interests more often.
However, also looking back at the process there are a lot of positives. When doing the testing we did it on both classmates and the public and it was great to see that our product provided the experience it was intended to as everyone enjoyed our product and praised the experience and how it triggered creativity. The group had very good chemistry as well which meant we all got along and worked well together. I think this is because we all have very similar personalities and interests which meant that we could feed off each other’s energy and ideas to produce even better ones.
My understanding of the experience and the process we went through to complete our project can be related to James Webb Young. In his book “A technique for producing ideas” he explains that people shouldn’t figure out where to look for new ideas but instead train our minds to generate new ideas naturally. I feel like that related to our group project as we spent a very large amount of time on one idea and looking for ideas online when instead we should have done what we did at the end of the project and went away and came up ideas on our own without external help and with doing that we were able to create a very good idea and project. I think it may be a good idea to investigate a different process for the next project. SmartStorming.com studied the question “what makes a good idea, good?” and according to the website, there are four specific things your idea should have to make it good. It needs to be different or an improved version of an existing idea, it needs value, it needs to be physically possible and doable, and it needs to have acceptable cost-benefit. Looking at these key ideas. Personally, I would like to follow these steps or at least consider this way of idea creation in the next project. This is because I want to test out another method of idea creation and find which versions suit me best. I also want to follow that criteria because some of the techniques we were taught during the process of our project didn’t necessarily benefit us or help us but having this criteria to look back at and follow will help give us a good basis for the project.
In the future, I would like to work with this group again as they provided a very good product but also the process was very enjoyable, and the group worked well together. However, I would like to look at other ways of researching ideas or maybe follow a different process to the one we did. Instead of all looking at one specific topic, we could split up as a group and brainstorm and create on our own and then come back as a group and mix and match and find the best aspects of everyone’s idea and turn it into the best idea we could make. Also, when I look back at the process I often ask myself “did I contribute enough”? and if so “what aspects were specifically inspired by me or my actions”? for the future projects I would like to contribute more at a higher level, providing more impactful ideas or strategies that could help shape our overall project a bit better.
 James Webb Young. A Technique for producing ideas. Chicago: Important Books, 2012
“What Makes A Good Idea, Good?” SmartStorming, 19 Sept. 2018, https://www.smartstorming.com/what-makes-a-good-idea-good/
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