Inspiradar - Text-only version
10 strategies for creative web searching
Thanks to Marc Heleven for the search tips: www.7ideas.be
How you formulate the problem when looking for creative solutions is extremely important. When searching the Internet, preparing your search query properly will get immediate results. Prepare the search query meticulously. Preferably not behind your keyboard!
- Sketch a mind map around the creative formulation of the problem. All too often, people base their search on just one general keyword, while looking for related term often gives surprising results.
- Try to find at least 10 synonyms for your core, obvious search term.
- Translate the search terms into at least three languages.
- Think up new things related to your creative question formulation or innovation domain yourself. Then check if these new concepts already exist on the web.
Everyone uses Google, but research shows that many people only use a fraction of this search engine’s potential or possibilities.
- Use at least three search terms and use “inverted commas” if words belong together.
- Test the possibilities of the advanced search screen, or use Soople.
Sometimes, you can get great results if you look for specific file formats.
Focussing your search on PowerPoints or PDFs in particular, often throws up excellent overview presentations related to your search. Slideshare is also handy for finding up-to-date presentations. - If a search turns up too many results (e.g. results 1 - 10 of approx. 438,000,000) then look for extra search terms – be careful here – in order to get a smaller but better selection.
Creative thinking is often a matter of imagination, visual thinking. After all, a picture paints a thousand words and dreams and fantasies are always connected to images. Draw inspiration from images. Browse among hundreds of photos related to your search to find that one special photo that will give you the inspiration you need.
- Google's image search
- Discover the many possibilities of Flickr (article).
- Look for images in over 100 languages with Panimages.
- Be inspired by more than 90 innovation films.
- Look for ideas in Ads of the World.
Try searching with ‘brain-imitating’ or associative methods. It is easy to generate flower and chain associations with these tools. This is extremely handy, especially in the phase in which you are investigating the problem. Sometimes, it can also lead to surprising turnarounds.
- Visual Thesaurus: Visual Thesaurus contains more than 145.000 concepts that are related to each other associatively. Wonderful tool.
- Kartoo: nice way to have your search results presented in the form of an interactive map. Study the advanced options.
- Webbrain: Webbrain shows the web visually: instead of browsing down long lists of text, you are presented with a dynamic unit of related information. You can jump from one concept to the other and the last word you clicked on becomes the central focus each time.
- Tagneutica: associations on the basis of tags within Flickr.
If you have found one, two or more specialised / exceptional / really favourite sites related to your creative search: type them into the search engine together to find other sites that share your passionate interests or coincidental preferences.
Underlying idea
It all comes down to finding people on the net who refer to the same sites as the ones that you find interesting. There is a good chance that they will refer on their site to links about that specific subject that you have not found yet. It’s so simple, but many sessions have shown that very few people go to work in this way to find similar / equivalent sites.
Another alternative is, of course, social book marking sites such as del.icio.us.
Looking for new concepts or products? Don’t forget to surf to sites with design competitions. Designboom competitions, for example, is very inspiring. Enjoy the numerous entries about "teenage furniture", "the home in 2020", ... or innovative tiles, new concepts for doors ... anything you can think of, in fact. Another fascinating website is Dexigner .
Why not hold your own competition, as an entrepreneur. Some examples of this are: the Nespresso design competition and Peugeot's search for a new car design.
Even better: inspired by open source, some companies get customers involved with product development: Dell IdeaStorm, Lego Digital Designer or Philips.
Finally, you can also browse through suggestions forums such as Bright idea or Halfbakery. You can find them all at Why Not.
There is usually someone who has patiently and systematically collected their ‘life’s work’ on an extremely clever site/blog that is closely related to your search or search terms. Therefore, do not look for partial information on Google, but try to find that expert who is painstakingly collecting everything connected to your subject in just one go.
Here are a few tips for finding an internet partner like this:
- Add weblog / blog to the search terms.
- Search via blog search engines such as Google Blog Search or Technorati.
- Find out if there is a good start page on your subject.
- Don’t just look at the first ten search results on Google. It’s possible that Google has not ranked the site you are looking for very highly.
On the web you can find many checklists that can be used for creative thinking, product development, innovation, ...
Here are a few examples:
- 715 Idea Stimulators: a never-ending checklist for improving your ideas.
- Checklist Osborn: the original checklist by Osborn. Is mainly, but not exclusively used for improving tangible products.
- TRIZ principles: Triz - Theory of inventive problem solving - is a method for solving problems through innovation and was developed by a Russian, Genrich Altshuller. He sifted through an enormous number of patents, searching for recurring patterns in the innovation process. Innovations are often based on the same fundamental solutions, even though they are applied in different industries and sciences. Often, an obvious solution for a problem appears to be impossible because contradictory requirements must be met. A solution only becomes really innovative after it has eliminated the contradiction.
These sites give you the chance to brainstorm online, either in groups or on your own:
Free online brainstorm: great stand alone mind-mapping tool for brainstorming.
Thinkature: you can generate and develop ideas with other people online ideas using mind mapping. You can either make your own drawings or add existing images.
Mousebrains: after adding several inputs about your question, Mousebrains will generate random triggers and questions that will stimulate you to think creatively.
Creativity Toolbox: a collection of small online tools for generating ideas and ‘instant stimulation’.
Idea Generator: nice.
You can find a clear and reasonably complete explanation on youtube.
Many web 2.0. applications offer opportunities to increase your powers of innovation.
Weblogs: persistent searching will reveal specialised blogs on practically every conceivable domain or innovation topic.
Customers insights: discover comments and annoyances that consumers formulate about existing products as a basis for product innovations.
Open source innovation: many web 2.0. tools are easy and reasonably cheap to use in this way (wiki’s – social networking sites - …)
You can find overviews of web 2.0. here, here and on this map.