Sparking Creativity: How Play and Humor Fuel Innovation and Design

by Barry Kudrowitz

Overview

Blending popular culture and design theory, framed by a decade of scholarly research, this book highlights how play and humor fuel innovation. Now, more than ever, we are in need of creative solutions to global problems, but creative skills and abilities decline over time without intervention and practice.

Sparking Creativity provides empirically supported methods for embracing the often-trivialized domains of play and humor to increase our creativity. It shows that topical examples, such as Seinfeld's humor, the Apples to Apples board game, and the Adventure Time cartoon series, are more closely related to innovation than you might first think. The book is organized into five main parts, each containing short, engaging subsections and informative, playful, and colorful illustrations to demonstrate concepts.

Written in a humorous and accessible style, this book is aimed toward creative-minded entrepreneurs, designers, engineers, industry leaders, parents, educators, and students. It encourages a playful approach throughout a design process to produce truly innovative solutions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781032232157
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/01/2023
Pages:	294
Product dimensions:	6.88(w) x 9.69(h) x (d)

About the Author

Barry Kudrowitz, PhD, is a professor of product design and department head in the College of Design at the University of Minnesota, USA. There, he founded and directed the product design program from 2011–2021. Kudrowitz received his PhD from the Mechanical Engineering Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), studying humor, creativity, and idea generation. Kudrowitz is interested in how creativity is perceived, evaluated, and learned. He has years of experience working with the toy industry and has taught toy design for over a decade. Kudrowitz co-designed a Nerf toy, an elevator simulator that was in operation at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., and a ketchup-dispensing robot that was featured on the Martha Stewart Show. He is also the associate editor of the International Journal of Food Design.

Table of Contents

PART I: CREATIVITY, PLAY, and HUMOR 1. The Four Requisites of a Creative Person, Dr. Momen's Clothing Dryer, and Captain Planet 2. Divergent Thinking, Rocket Racoon, and Scribblenauts 3. Convergent Thinking, Bunny Scissors, and Sherlock Holmes 4. Verbal Creativity, Code Names, and Puns 5. Fluency, Originality, and Family Feud 6. Flexibility, Elaboration, and Scattergories 7. Inspiration, da Vinci's Notebooks, and RuPaul's Drag Race 8. Diffusing Focus, Shower Thoughts, and (a Few) Psychoactive Drugs PART II: INNOVATION, PLAY, and HUMOR 9. Three Requisites of Innovation, Utility Patents, and a Tanning Booth Toaster 10. Silly Ideas, Shitty Robots, and Poop Ice Cream 11. Flavors of Innovation, the Nonstick Frying Pan, and USB Drives 12. Radical Innovation, Whiskey-Infused Lotion, and High Fashion 13. Questioning the Status Quo, Taboo Topics, and Toilets 14. Questioning the Status Quo, Taboo Topics, and Toilet Paper 15. Hindsight, Toothbrushes, and Smart Phones 16. Science Fiction, Superheroes, and Aliens 17. The Adjacent Possible, The Simpsons’ Predictions, and Rick and Morty PART III: PLAY, CREATIVITY, and INNOVATION 18. Defining Play, Puppies, and Tom Sawyer 19. Play Taxonomies, Adult Play, and Jake the Dog 20. The Criteria for Play, Flow, and Bluey 21. Work, Montessori, and TPS Report Coversheets 22. Play–Creativity Connections, The Little Prince, and Positive Affect 23. Steve Jobs vs. Mary Poppins, Kindergarten, and Spinach Brownies 24. Adding Play Value, Overcooked, and The Holle Bolle Gijs PART IV: HUMOR, CREATIVITY, and INNOVATION 25. Two Theories (and Larrys) of Humor, Throwing Shade, and Throwing Pies 26. The Incongruity Theory of Humor, Cartoon Captions, and the Excalibur Toilet Brush 27. Remoteness of Association, Garth’s Spew Cup, and Apples to Apples 28. Metaphorical Thinking, a Finger Trap Biopsy Needle, and SCAMPER 29. Connecting Domains, the Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, and TRIZ 30. The Humor of Discovery, Hidden Gorillas, and Seinfeld 31. How Comedy Makes Change, Satire, and South Park 32. Improvisation, Yes and..."Boom! Freeze! Michael Scarn, FBI!" PART V: A PLAYFUL and HUMOROUS DESIGN PROCESS 33. Thinking About Design Thinking 34. Researching Design Research 35. How Might We...Define How We Define Our Prompts 36. An Improv Warm-up Progression for Team-Based Idea Generation 37. Ideas for Idea Generation 38. Models of Testing and Testing of Models

Editorial Reviews

"From Amy Klobachur's use of a comb to eat her salad to the invention of the Squatty Potty, from The Little Mermaid to Ru Paul's Drag Race, from robots that poop ketchup to Green Eggs and Ham, this playful, smart and engaging book by designer Barry Kudrowitz takes us on a twisty path to surprising and unfamiliar places as it helps to explore the nature of human creativity, how we can enhance it, and what ways we can use it to improve the quality of our lives. This is the ideal book to get your juices flowing."

Henry Jenkins, Civic Imagination Project, University of Southern California, USA

"I once did a cartoon where a dad says to his young kid, ‘Go out at play, Norman. It’s your job.’ It’s a joke based on the idea that work and play are antithetical. Barry Kudrowitz has written a book that shows they mustn’t be if we want the creative solutions our 21st-century workplace demands. He makes a compelling case for work being more like play and vice-versa to maximize the benefits of both."

Bob Mankoff, former Cartoon Editor of The New Yorker Magazine, USA

"It is not easy to write a serious book about creativity and innovation that is not to be read too seriously. But Kudrowitz does just that through a prolific use of playful design, humor, inspiring quotes and rigorous research. The book is filled with Silly Ideas, Shitty Robots and Poop Ice Cream – both the title of Chapter 10 and also examples of ways in which real innovation can spring forth from ideas, products, and designs that are fun, fanciful, and surprising. Kudrowitz writes, 'Things that seem silly at first may actually be innovative in the future.' And so an academic book that makes you laugh out loud might turn out to be a transformative approach to understanding the origins of and possibilities for creativity in our lives."

Steven J. Tepper, Dean, Director and Foundation Professor, Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, USA

"The beauty of humor is that it resolves tensions between opposites, aka as a pleasurable relief. In a world full of societal challenges, characterized by conflicts and polarities, we cannot underestimate the need for humor to spur innovation and creative solutions, connecting the non-obvious. Kudrowitz’s incredibly rich and entertaining book demonstrates how we can design ourselves playfully out of any crisis. Meanwhile, you learn what is so great about very old Dutch cheese and our children’s farms..."

Paul Hekkert, Professor of Design, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

"Barry Kudrowitz has conducted years of rigorous, experimental studies on fostering creativity in designers, and he makes those results come alive in a playful, engaging way in Sparking Creativity. This book is a must for anyone who wants to unlock their own creativity, or teach others how to be more creative, using research-backed, yet accessible strategies. Barry will make you seriously creative!"

Maria Yang, Associate Dean of Engineering, MIT, USA

"This book provides great suggestions for using playful and humor-related experiences to enhance creative thinking and promote innovative actions. Readers from many professional fields can benefit from exploring its many ideas for fostering effective and wide-ranging actions to address contemporary issues and problems that need creative solutions."

Doris Bergen, Distinguished Professor of Educational Psychology Emerita, Miami University, USA

From the Publisher