Two weeks ago I visited BMW in Munich. They had organised a series of workshops about the developments on electric cars. A lot of talk about the engineering side (batteries, carbon, crash safety) and a tiny little bit about the design. I wrote a special on the subject for Bright.

Next week I’ll be hosting another Floss evening filled with guests from the arts, science and business world that will talk about ‘play’. For €7,50 you’ll be entertained for the entire evening at the Blokhuispoort in Leeuwarden. More info can be found at the Floss website.

Last thursday I talked to Laurens van den Acker, Renaults chief designer. His favourite Renault is the original Alpine and he sketches any car from memory, whether it’s a Renault 4, a Lancia Stratos or a Peugeot 407. In the Bright iPad app (not available yet) you’ll be able to see all the sketches Laurens made and hear his stories about the cars he loves.

This coming thursday I’ll interview Renault designs head honcho, my fellow countryman Laurens van den Acker. The man made a mark for himself at Mazda and spearheads the invasion of dutch car designers together with the likes of Adriaan van Hooydonk (the post Chris Bangle BMW design chief). The interview will be featured in the Bright iPad app and will make use of the interactive features of the platform. Now I’m not giving away too much, but I will admit I need to record sound. So I checked my gadget arsenal to see which would work best. My iPhone has a memo recorder, my Kodak Zi8 records sound and my MacBook can do the job as well. But none of them are made for the job and none of them have very good mics. Online I read I really need to use an external microphone. Now it just happens to be the case that I bought a USB microphone along with some other peripherals. I tested it on the MacBook and it worked like a charm. But I suspect Laurens is going to die laughing when I pull this microphone out of my bag.

Yes, I am still writing my book on concepting. Yes, it is taking way too much time. But no, I am not giving up. Things you should know that have happened since my last post:

1. I’ve decided to change the title
2. I still haven’t decided what to change it into
3. I’ve decided it’s not so much a handbook as it is something else
4. I still haven’t decided what that ‘something else’ is.
5. I’ve written a few new chapters, thanks to some brilliant feedback by Marije Kuiper
6. Here’s one to enjoy: feel free to add your own tips in the comments.

I’m stuck, now what?
Annoyingly, brainstorming is seldom as glamourous as it seems when you first hear about it. It’s not a room with creative people in tune with eachother and their surroundings churning out miracle after miracle. Most of the time there’s bad ideas, politics, people that stall the process and egos involved. And you might get to the point where you have to conclude: I’m stuck. So now what?

First off: flip back to the chapter with brainstorming rules (I know you can’t do that on this website, but just pretend). Nine times out of ten most of these rules are broken in a brainstorm. Now if you’ve got a good vibe going you can stray off the path of the righteous brainstormer, but you’ll have to come back to it as soon as you can. So check the rules, check the proceedings so far and make adjustments. Make sure everyone wholeheartedly agrees with the method, otherwise you’ll be stuck again in no time at all. Look alive!

Now even if you’ve all been behaving quite nicely, you could still get stuck. A lot of the time there’s plenty of ideas flying across the room, but none are in themselves the total concept. And different people like different ideas. A great way to not get stuck is by making a timeline or a model of your endproduct. Write down what you know and what’s lacking, so you can fill in the blanks. This is a lot easier then trying to come up with the mother-of-all-ideas in one go.

Another method is remixing: look for an ideal mental image of what your product/design should look, sound and feel like and try to compose it using parts of existing products/designs. Then analyse what you’ve made and make your own version using the same principles.

A totally different way of brainstorming might help you move forward as well. Instead of talking, let all the participants sketch. Have them cut out images and work with those. Listen to music. Or take a step forward into the process and start designing. Look at what you come up with and take that back into the brainstormphase.

Asking silly questions can help you with your process as well: What if the queen used our product? What would happen? What if we can only use cardboard as a material? What if colorblind people had to be able to use it, what would happen? All these questions restrict your attention and make you focus.

What if you think you’ve come up with a fantastic concept, but you’re not sure. Only one way to find out: start exercising your concept on a design. For example: I’m organising a party with the theme ‘Zero budget’. Now how do I translate this into the invitation, the drinks, the cups, the toilets, etc. Make sure you don’t cut corners. If the concept is ‘zero budget’ you should really think radically with zero budget.

People can’t brainstorm for hours: so if you feel the energy is starting to dissipate, take action. A radical break is usually the best option. This doesn’t mean standing outside with a cigarette and continuing the brainstorm there. But really take a break. Have a good lunch. Don’t stay in the same place. Move away from your project.

Another thing that brings back energy is writing down everything you’ve agreed on so far. From planning to implementation, everything that should stay that has been mentioned.

Take your brainstorm somewhere else. If you don’t have the time for a radical break cause it takes too much time, just move to a new brainstorming place. Or at the very least switch chairs.

If you still can’t get out of your slump with these tips, have a sabbatical or change jobs.

I hosted the Noorderlink seminar on recruitment yesterday. And boy was it a hundred times more interesting than this opening sentence suggests. A lot of people in Human Resource positions willing to embrace change and experiment and great feedback on my presentation about the project I’ve been working on for the UMCG hospital. I met the lovely Marinus Pranger and Renate van Dijken who work at WOOH. And was impressed by the presentation about Generation Einstein by Renate. As were most of the visitors.

Although I’m always skeptical about any theory involving an entire generation, I do believe the shift to more ‘meaningful’ work might become more and more important. I recommend you keep an eye on the people at Wooh.

Our mayor (a real one, not on Foursquare) Peter Rehwinkel spinned some records yesterday as an intermezzo to the political debate we had. Especially the Top 40 hit ‘Alors On Danse’ got some hips moving. The rest of the 60 minutes consisted of Joop Atsma being sharp when he had to, Betty de Boer and Fleur Gräper unable to solve the questions surrounding nuclear powerplants and Hyena Gijs with an hilarious column.

DHV is a big company that does consulting and engineering for transportation, water, building, industry and so on. One of their 5500 employees rang me up to talk about their sales process. Like most firms they’ve been working with brochures, leaflets and other paperwork filled with endless stories. But unlike most they’d discovered that the people are doing the selling and the leaflets are mostly waste. And they’re right of course.

When you are about to hire someone for a multimillion euro deal, you expect them to have shiny brochures written by copywriters who aren’t engineers or consultants. So the basis of negotiating is usually:

a) trust
b) previous experiences
c) the bottom line: bang for your buck

So out with the old and in with the new. Question for now is, what should the new be? I’ll be working on that for the next couple of weeks.

The CBK project for the Noorderzon Festival reached a significant milestone yesterday. We got to pick the artist that will be cooking up the concept and take the project on. Out of the two candidates (Maren Lösing and Fabian Hijlkema) there could be only one winner. Maren made the excellent choice of presenting not one, but two ideas and Fabian came up with new school Arduino panache. In the end Henk Bothof (Noorderzon), Jolijn Peters (Platform GRAS), Nicoline Wijnja (CBK) and me all agreed: Maren Lösing would be the unanimous winner. I can’t give away too many details, but let’s just say that it’s simplicity is what makes it perfect.

Friday the 28th of may the 6th edition of the Societe de Puddingfabrique will take place. With DJ (and mayor of Groningen) Peter Rehwinkel and a fast paced debate on the upcoming elections. That’s where I come in, I will be asking the tough questions and stir up a storm.

On the topic of presenting: Noorderlink invited me to present an afternoon on the communication surrounding recruitment. Thursday the tenth of june I’ll be on stage.