Author: Sebastian Lau

 
One of the strengths of design thinking is how structured it is, from identifying problems to prototyping solutions. Yet, when it comes to ideation, you’re presented with a blank canvas. Even when for the Crazy 8 in IBM’s own EDT methodology, you are just given a blank sheet of paper and a few guidelines and as a result, it is difficult for designers to come up with innovative ideas. This is where Mutagen comes in, which is a card game designed for ideation. You play in a group of people and everyone comes up with an initial solution. The premise is that you use cards to steal other people’s ideas and apply changes to it. For example, let’s say you wanted to get up feeling more refreshed. The initial solution might be “put the alarm clock further away so you have to walk to it”. Using this card, I have to change the amount of effort it takes to use this solution, so instead of just walking to it, let’s say now you put it in a different spot every day so that you have to look for it, which can help stimulate your mind, not just your body. The reason it works so well is because the cards are specific enough to guide you, but broad enough to let you think out of the box. Instead of putting your phone in a different spot, you can use the same card to give you math problems and achieve the same effect. Even if you don’t come up with the best idea, you can always mix and match by taking pieces from other people’s ideas. This factors into another strength of Mutagen: fostering collaboration. By stealing other people’s ideas you’re inherently reducing the ownership anyone has over an idea, which decreases bias and increases objectivity and in turn helps generate better discussion. This concept warrants further exploration, potentially even bringing it to market either as a service or product as a tool to help the masses generate interesting, high quality, out of the box solutions.