2022 - PresentCreativity and human connection both start in the same place: curiosity. The willingness to ask one more question, notice one more detail, take one more unplanned turn.
So over 100+ days, I made a paper tool a day — spinners, dice, pop-ups, volvelles, booklets — each one designed to nudge curiosity in a specific direction: toward Self, Others, the World, or the Creative Challenge at hand. Some are quiet provocations for solo use — a compass for getting oriented in a new place. Others ease you into conversation with someone new, like Break the Ice Cube. And some are built to unstick teams — like the Metaphor Deck, made to surface a new perspective on a challenge.
All of them share the same belief: that a small nudge toward curiosity can lead to a new idea, a better solution, or greater understanding of the person across from you.
Curiosity is a practice. These are some of the tools.
CURIOUS TOOLS
Follow The Color
Ditch the map and let color guide you on an unplanned tour of your city or neighborhood. This tools is inspired by the French Situationists use of Derives to explore the urban landscape and inspire different ways of thinking in the 1950s.
Dare Dice
Roll the die for a nudge toward a new experience.
How to Play:
Place your creative challenge in the center. Deal the metaphor cards. Take turns finding/forcing a connection between the metaphor and your challenge.
PreMortem
Time travel into the future to see what went wrong and how to prevent it. The PreMortem was developed by Gary Klein in 2007 to normalize critique of the plan and improve decision making.
Metaphors for Creativity
This tool offers 8 potential metaphors for the creative process for you to try on for size: Gardening, Astronomy, A Game of Ping Pong, Alchemy, Surfing, Fishing, A Science Experiment, Cooking or Baking.
Color Story
How would you tell the story of your day with color? Would you capture the color you see in your environment throughout the day - or the quality of the light? Would you document your mood through color - or your energy level? Could you capture the types of activities you were doing with color?
Dare To… Flyer
This tear-away flyer has 8 prompts for getting off your beaten path and stretching your mind.
Curious Goggles 2: The Nose Knows
Use these curious goggles to follow your nose down memory lane. What do you smell? What, where, when or who does it make you think of?
Inside Weather Report
The Inside Weather Report is a tool to prompt you and your team to get curious about and reflect on your current emotional state using the metaphor of weather.
Metaphor Deck
This deck includes 4 suits of metaphors on colored cards: Role, Activity, Food, Space. The white cards are the “Focus” of the exercise - the area you’re trying to think differently about.
Iceberg
The Iceberg Model is a systems thinking tool to uncover the root causes of an observable event or behavior.
Permission Slip
With this tool, you are granted permission to get out of the office and away from the computer. Permission to pause your productivity and get out to where creative inspiration and insight really happen.
Winning Question Award
This tool is a reminder to value and reward asking new, beautiful and sometimes inconvenient questions – questions that can open up new ways of seeing and new opportunities. Too often we’re focused on finding the right answer to the wrong question.
Get Lost Flyer
This tear-away flyer has 8 different options for getting lost. Take one and follow the directions. You never know what you might find.
Curious Goggles 1: Now Hear This
Sight often crowds out our other senses. Use these curious goggles to focus on - and amplify the sounds in your environment.
Bingo! The “NEW” Edition
This tool provides some specific prompts for getting out there to experiment, learn, get inspired and gain new perspective that will fuel your creativity.
The Big Here Compass
Inspired by Kevin Kelly’s Big Here Quiz, this compass is designed to help us get oriented to any new place we find ourselves.
Break the Ice Cube
Questions for easing into a more social, post-pandemic world.