Anyway, I have been aware of Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies for quite some time. Then there’s Jeff Noon’s Cobralingus Engine. And IDEO’s Method Cards. Lots of different ways of getting your brain to think in different ways. 

So I thought I’d try and have a go at creating my own. I liked how all the other cards worked, but I wanted something that was specific for product designers. Something that could help them sketch out new ideas and come up with innovative concepts. And so here they are: Iterations. These cards help you create more interesting designs in your concept sketching.

The Theory

Creative methodologies usually combine divergent thinking (applying a stimulus to generate potential outcomes) and convergent thinking (bringing facts and data together and applying logic).   

The Iterations cards help divergent thinking by giving suggestions on how to process the output. They work as a set of guitar effect pedals to your process. There is an input, a set of ambiguous instructions that can be applied to this input, and an undetermined output created by these effects.

In layman’s terms: you draw a concept sketch, then draw a card. Then draw a concept based around your interpretation of what the card says. Then draw another card. And repeat.

Development and testing

My jumping off point for these cards were the few samples that Jeff Noon had put out onto the internet as part of his Cobralingus Engine. Instead of using blocks of text like Noon uses in his Cobralingus Engine, the input is a sketch, a concept, an idea.

I then added as many other similar commands and instructions that were ambiguous enough to be taken in several different ways, tested them to see if they would work and then tweaked them until I had about fifty. 

I spent a while sketching, drawing a card, sketching the result, drawing another card, sketching the result for all the cards to see how the cards felt being used. I had to remove a couple of key words like BULK and FREEZE as the concept didn’t seem to add anything to the sketching development.

Printing 

After what seemed like an endless time of testing, tweaking and getting the wording correct I got the lovely people at moo.com to print this version of the cards.

Here is the content of the full final list of cards

• ENTROPY Introduce corruption to Iteration.
• CHORUS Repeat motifs across components.
• ECHO Repeat, but less.
• ENHANCE Furnish with elements of beauty.
• POSSESS Imbibe iteration with the spirit of a personal hero.
• EXPLODE Fragment Iteration into disorganised components.
• REMIX Combine all previous Iterations.
• RESPAWN Re-Iterate all components, motifs and functionality in a new way.
• ABORT Prematurely complete process.
• DRUG Visualise the effects of legal and non-legal intoxications.
• DISTORT Next process only affects one part of Iteration.
• COPY Duplicate component or aspect.
• PURIFY Remove all unnecessary affectations from Iteration.
• SHUFFLE Disorder components.
• COMPRESS Remove excessive space.
• EQUALISE Assign same value of importance to all components.
• PASTLIFE Re-Iterate as an ancestor from a different time period.
• LOOP Repeat last Iteration. 
• SAMPLE Add new functionality.
• PURGE Remove all functionality.
• BOUNCE Re-Iterate as the absolute opposite.
• CUT Remove component or aspect.
• THOMPSON Encourage craziness in Iteration.
• DELICATE Like a leaf on the wind.
• ORDER Logical, linear, layout.
• FORCE Complicate the Iteration to the point of unusability.
• GHOST Echo a design classic.
• LAX Be lazy about the process.
• LIFELINE Get a colleague to Iterate.
• DISGUISE Make Iteration look like something else.
• LOBOTOMISE Remove all complications from Iteration.
• SPLIT SIGNAL Create two Iterations each containing half the components.
• CLEAN Lighten colours, soften textures, smooth components.
• DIRT Darken colours, harden textures, roughen components.
• LYNCH Encourage surrealism in Iteration.
• FUZZ Soften sharpness. Smooth edges.
• VIRUS Grow new iteration from each component, function, affectation.
• REPLACE Replace component with another.
• OVERDRIVE Create ten Iterations in twenty minutes.
• REVERB Remove main component leaving associated affectations.
• SATURATE Re-iterate using five more cards.
• BLUR Blend component processes and affectations together.
• DODGE Remove extra detail from affectations or functions.
• BURN Apply extra detail to affectations or functions.
• BLANK Left blank for user to create their own.
• BLANK Left blank for user to create their own.
• BLANK Left blank for user to create their own.
• BLANK Left blank for user to create their own.
• RULES Instructions on how process works.
• ABOUT About Duncan McKean. 

The reason why there are slightly enigmatic words like component, iteration, affectations is to avoid the trap of direct instruction and allow inference of what functionality or component could mean.

Please feel free to make your own, but remember: they are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0

One thing I wanted to do was to show my process of how I come up with the designs for some / all of my projects. It shows understanding of the creative process, plus it allows entry to further discussions about the project.

Heat Maps

source

People look at a screen in a particular way and I wanted to use that information to help with the layout of my site. It is fairly obvious: important links across the top, relevant contextual links in sidebars, letter links at bottom, obvious call-to-action statements, clear headings and directions.

The only concession I made was where there is a sidebar, I wanted it to be on the right because content is king and the left-hand side of the screen gets looked at first. That was where I wanted my content.

Search Engine Optimisation

This is very important for any website. Once there is a website there's not much use for it if it can't be found. Although most of my traffic would be coming from direct links in emails (using Google goo.gl shortening to track clicks), I still wanted excellent SEO on my website so people searching for my site (or "product design portfolio", "amsterdam product design", or similar) could easily find it.

Here are five things I did to the website to increase its SEO:

•  Add the WordPress SEO plugin so I control how my search results appear
• Create fairly regular, relevant and useful notes and articles to increase backlinks and content
•  Make sure all images on the website are tagged correctly
•  Choose a well-designed and coded theme for the WordPress blogging platform
•  Promote new content via social media network

 

Site Heirachy

I sketched out an idea how the website would work: how the pages linked together and what content came under what headers.

I wanted particular pages to look a certain way. Some pages needed to have no sidebar, others my have unique and possibly personalised sidebars. I sketched out some thumbnails to work out the layout look and feel of the style of the main site pages.

I also worked out the reach of the website through social media, self-promotion and other relevant websites.

Finally, I have a couple of other things that I'm interested in and would like to store on this site that have less relevance to product design.

• I have a fairly popular infographic CV that people visit in their droves. I've put on this site, added some Google adverts to the bottom of it and hidden it away.
• When I have the time and the fancy takes me, I create treasure hunts. I wanted a place to hide them away on this site as they have no relevance to product design and so I have set up a separate portfolio page to showcase them. 
• I have a map of Haarlem that I add experiences and useful information onto in when I get the time. I just wanted a place to store it.

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