30 seconds to creativity
by Brandon SchauerI tweeted a while back that it’s been discovered you can boost creativity with side-to-side eye movement. People who watched a target moving side-to-side for 30 seconds have been tested as producing significantly more ideas when immediately given a creative task. This technique is, “thought to increase the cross-talk between the hemispheres.”
So I put together both a PowerPoint and Keynote file to help you do the same thing. Try it out before your next design session, and let us know if you think it works!
Entries (RSS)
February 2nd, 2010 at 10:33 am
Yep, I realize that the video is 49 seconds… Keynote doesn’t seem to exist in the same space-time continuum as Quicktime, Vimeo, and well, us.
February 2nd, 2010 at 12:02 pm
Nice demonstration of the experiment using the awesomely powerful animation tools of powerpoint/keynote (I only half kid). But one liberty you took in your mock-up was the alteration of the target’s color. And for that I thank you. Watching a target uniformly move from side to side with no other change I suspect could result in rapidly diminishing returns (or worst a loss) of creative performance. Clearly you recognized that, and introduced the new color at the “appropriate” moment. This was, in fact, testing a new theory on boosting creativity: random stimulation. Though not an earth-shattering notion, we intrinsically recognize a need for mixing-it-up when things grow stale. Even after a few passes from red to green and back again, I experienced a noticeable decline to my own “creative juices”. Creative burn-out in itself could be another interesting topic to discuss. Until then, you may want to consider shortening the animation/video down to even 15 seconds (and unlooping it), or play around with the myriad of drawing tools at your disposal (shape, speed, position, etc.). Thanks for sharing.
February 2nd, 2010 at 2:14 pm
Hi Eric… and good points about the format. I actually went with the color chance to prevent burning a dot on the back of your retina, but I agree it would be helpful to avoid the hypnotic/boredom effect. Perhaps it needs a high-tempo techno soundtrack.
February 2nd, 2010 at 2:30 pm
There’s no perhaps about it.
February 2nd, 2010 at 4:43 pm
Have you tried reading a book?
February 2nd, 2010 at 6:09 pm
or there’s always pong.
February 3rd, 2010 at 2:45 am
Daniel is right, isn’t reading moving your eyes back and forth for long periods of time?
February 3rd, 2010 at 6:58 am
Sounds like witch-craft to me…still anything is worth a go these days…:-) do you know what you might have started here?
February 4th, 2010 at 11:02 am
you’d have to be pretty desperate to actually do this. i think it is ridiculous.
February 8th, 2010 at 6:31 am
[...] 30 Seconds To Creativity - People who watched a target moving side-to-side for 30 seconds have been tested as producing significantly more ideas when immediately given a creative task. This technique is, “thought to increase the cross-talk between the hemispheres.” [...]
February 9th, 2010 at 12:36 pm
[...] 30 seconds to creativity (adaptivepath.com) [...]
February 10th, 2010 at 5:05 am
CG – pipe down. You have no grasp of the mechanics of the human mind, infact I am not sure its possible for you to be one with such a lazy arrogant comment.
February 10th, 2010 at 10:31 pm
I prefer the Guinness way to creativity. A bit longer but a lot more fun, and it works! (Or at least it seems that way)
February 11th, 2010 at 3:37 pm
[...] via [...]
February 16th, 2010 at 5:06 am
hi, Brandon. it’s cool. I did a translation work of your idea into chinese on this site. link: http://wavebehind.org/2010/02/post-14.html
February 16th, 2010 at 8:15 am
if this is true people who watch tennis must be the most creative people in the world.
February 24th, 2010 at 12:00 pm
[...] Adaptive Path and Scientific [...]