[MUSIC] In the previous video, I talked about why stories are important in design. And how expressing your design objective in the form of a story can help us always keep human perspective in mind while we design. Now your next task is to find that main idea for your project and to write it down in a form of a short story. An example of a short story could be like talking about Aravena's project in last video. The short story was, we're going to make a half of a good home, and then make space in infrastructure for people to build the restaurant they can. Or in this case, your short story could be I want to make a place where children can play and parents can make money while watching them play, it's a story. The story that you create now will encapsulate the main idea about your design and will help you design your project and present your project in the next couple of assignments. But now, let's just try to focus on how to actually come up with this main idea, how to create a story. Now, as I told you, as always when you need to do a creative work, when you need to come up with some original and new ideas, you need to start with what you know. And as a matter of fact, you already know a lot about this project. In the second week, you analyzed all the activities that could happen in this place. In the last week you analyzed what this space can look like. You also had the feedback from your peers. And actually, if you need more feedback you're always welcome to go around and ask people. Show them what you did and ask people, what do you think about this? All this material, all the things that your peers told you, everything that you've learned, and everything that you liked and you disliked. This is all the materials that you will use now to generates some original ideas. And this part, generating ideas is actually very difficult. What you want to do, generally speaking, is you want to manipulate all of this material that you have. And you want to come up with such ideas that emphasize all the good things. The things that you liked and your peers liked about this place. And also try to solve all the negative things that you might notice about this place. And as I told you, this is really a difficult step and it takes a lot of experience. I wish I could give you a step-by-step guide on how to perform this, but I don't know that would be possible. But I can surely give you some useful tips on how to go about this. My first tip would be to try to write down and sketch as much as you can. As I told you, when we need to manipulate a lot of complex ideas at the same time, it's simply much easier for our brains to have things written down. Than always try to keep them in our mind and try to manipulate them in such way. So, again, think about all the things that you liked that you've done so far, that you dislike. Try to write them maybe on PostIt notes one step at a time, one activity that you like at a time. And then, once you have everything literally on the table, you will find much it easier to combine these things into original new concepts. My second tip is, try to see and realize if some of the comments, some of the activities repeat. Because this thing that repeats, maybe many people gave you exactly the same comment, and actually the same thing that you're thinking. If there's some things that everybody likes or everybody dislikes, that's probably very important. And maybe this is what you want to base your story upon. Third tip is, try to simplify things for you. One way to simplify, is to maybe, if you talk about activities, a way to group activities together. And in fact, it's a good idea to always try to think about what activities could work together well and what activities could be working much better separated. As you remember in the second week, when we were just talking about activities, I told you, don't judge. Don't think about something as good or bad, but right now, it's time to evaluate these things. And, as I'm talking about separating activities or putting together, right now, you might want to also consider space. I don't want you to design space right now, but you might want to consider. If some kind of activities need sort of a separation, for example, maybe on one side you will have teenagers having a party while parents have a barbecue. Which is, probably at least for the teenagers, [INAUDIBLE] something that you want to separate. So, maybe you want to make a note that a kind of wall or a platform would come well. But as I said, if you have some idea about design, you can still sketch. But right now, you try to focus on activities and telling the story behind them. Another idea would be, you can still try to diverge. When I say diverge, that means try to think of many different options. Although, at the end of this task, we want to have one story that express one clear idea, sometimes it's very difficult and a lot of, let's say a lot of responsibility trying to find that one ideal story. So instead, I will try to make it easier for you and think about, okay, instead of trying one perfect story, I'm going to try and find 5 stories in 20 minutes. And then, once you have five stories that are not perfect, but they make sense, maybe you want to try to find a way to converge them. Remember, from many options into one, to converge all these different stories and see there's some common threads. And then basically try to find one perfect idea out of these five ideas that are not perfect but probably make sense. Also, all the creative tips that I gave you last week is something that you still maybe want to consider. Especially, I would say, try not to get stuck. And as a matter of fact, I'm sure you will get stuck a lot in this assignment and it's okay, it's okay. As I told you last week, if you find yourself get stuck, don't panic, just try to plow through in one way or in another. As I told you, the best way if you get stuck creatively is to stop and try to do something else. Maybe perfect thing would be, if you get stuck with something, try to call a friend and ask him something related to the task you're doing, some tip. Or, you can just do something silly. Write down some silly story and see how that relates to your idea. The point is, when you get stuck, you get in a mindset that says, I have to do this, but I can't. And this is not the mindset that the creative ideas come from. So if you get stuck just relax and try to get interested in what you do. Try to think about that, I want to have this story, it's not that I have to do it. And finally, when you come to that one story of couple of sentence that encapsulates the idea perfectly, you want to write it down. And then the next couple of video, I'm going to show you how to actually create the design for that story. And then how to present your project, again, guided by that story. [MUSIC]
