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A popular creativity technique is to look at a list of words that suggest how something can be changed, and then imagining the suggested changes to see if any of the changes provide improvement. A simple example of using this word-oriented prompting technique is the invention (actually the re-invention) of the mini-van. The idea for the mini-van could have been prompted by applying the word smaller to the design of vans.
This word-prompting technique can be enhanced by recognizing the dimensions that are at the root of such change-oriented words. For example, the words smaller, bigger, larger, enlarge, and miniaturize all refer to increasing or decreasing the dimension of size. As another example, the words heating, cooking, refrigerating, and freezing all suggest changing temperature. This reduction in the number of words that suggest the same number of changes makes it easier to consider more possibilities.
Using fewer words has the added benefit of focusing attention on physical dimensions that aren't as well known. For instance, the physical dimension of color saturation is not well known although it accounts for the familiar difference between pink and red.
Here is a list of just a few physical dimensions that can be used to prompt ideas for physical changes: length, width or horizontal extent, height or vertical extent, thickness, three-dimensional size, weight, density, flatness (versus curvedness), smoothness (versus roughness), flexibility (versus rigidity), brightness, color saturation, temperature, heat capacity, thermal (heat) conductivity, frequency, amplitude, efficiency of effort, sweetness, bitterness, sourness, saltiness, and spiciness. These are dimensions that can be increased or decreased (which is not true of all dimensions).
Let's consider an example that shows how an understanding of one of these physical dimensions can lead to a creative solution to a problem. A woman was confronted by the problem that wine brought to a party had not already been chilled. Chilling the bottle of wine in the freezer would take too long. To chill it quickly, she put the wine into a plastic bag, immersed it into a container of ice water, periodically moved the wine and water, and waited a few minutes. Then she put the wine back into the bottle and it was ready to serve. What she recognized was that she needed to increase the thermal conductivity of the material between the wine and a cold environment -- to increase the rate at which heat traveled from the wine to the cold surroundings. Bottle glass has a low thermal conductivity (meaning that it doesn't allow heat to quickly pass through it). In contrast, a thin plastic bag has a higher thermal conductivity. The water surrounding the ice further increased the rate at which heat flowed from the wine to the ice -- compared to depending on air, which has a much lower thermal conductivity. The wine cooled quickly once it had an easy way for it's warmth to get to the surrounding ice cubes. The key to thinking of this solution was to consider increasing the physical dimension of thermal conductivity.
In addition to physical dimensions that can be increased or decreased, there are yet other kinds of dimensions that prompt ideas for possible physical changes. Here are a few examples: add/create, remove/eliminate/destroy, copy, replace/substitute/exchange, move, transpose, and rotate. Many other physical dimensions are also worth considering as possibilities for advantageous changes. More complete lists of physical dimensions, plus ways to recognize non-physical dimensions that appear in social and business situations, appear in the Thinking Dimensionally chapter of my book titled The Creative Problem Solver's Toolbox.
Lists of physical dimensions provide a rich source of creative ideas for solving problems that involve physical objects and substances. In addition, such lists increase awareness of important, yet unfamiliar, physical dimensions.
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